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(Lilt l^mtth (Slnngrfgatinnal QII|urrI| 
in ICittlr (Hampton. 



THE TWO-HUNDREDTH ANNIVER- 
SARY OF THE ORGANIZATION 
OF THE UNITED CONGREGA- 
TIONAL CHURCH, LITTLE COMPTON. 
RHODE ISLAND, SEPTEMBER 7, 1904 



Published by 
The United Congregational Society 

Little Compton, R. I. 






The Providence Press 

Snow & Farnham Company 

Printers 

1906 






CONTENTS. 



Introductory Notice . . . . . , . 

Committees ......... 

Order of Exercises ....... 

Historical Discourse, The Little Compton United Congre- 
gational Church, Rev. Wilson R. Buxton 

Addresses : 

Rev. Augustus M. Rice 
Rev. William D. Hart . 
Rev. Thomas F. Norris 
Rev. James H. Lyon 
Rev. Thomas R. Slicer, D. D. 
Horace G. Shaw 

Abstract of Sermon, Rev. Albert H. Plumb, D. D. 
Historical Address, The Town of Little Compton 
R, B. Burchard ....... 

The Historical Exhibit 

Catalogue of the Historical Exhibit . . . . 



Page 

5 
7 
9 

11 

37 
42 
46 
48 
53 
55 

57 

61 
109 
112 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The Church . . . . 

Rev. Wilson R, Buxton 

The Old Town Hall, old print 

Rev, Samuel Beane 

Rev. William D. Hart . 

" Betty Alden " Monument . 

Grave of Col. Benjamin Church 

Graves of " Elizabeth, who should have been," and 

Lidia who was, the wife of Simeon Palmer 
Commission of Col. Sylvester Richmond 
Interior of Old Town Hall, old print . 
(yoramission of Col. Sylvester Brownell, as Major 
The Governor's Grandsons, painting by E. H. 

Blashfield 

George S. Burleigh .... 



Frontispiece 


page 


11 


(( 


16 


a 


28 


a 


42 


u 


76 


11 


78 


(( 


80 


(f 


82 


(( 


84 


(( 


89 


(( 




(1 


101 


(( 


107 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The United Congregational Church of Little Compton 
R I was organized November 30, 1704. In order to avoid 
so far as possible the likelihood of inclement weather, the 
church appointed September 7, 1904, as the day of cele- 
bration of its bi-centennial. 

In preparation for that event a general committee was 
chosen by the church consisting of Rev. Wilson R. Buxton, 
pastor; Deacon Erastus S. Bailey, J. Webster Coombs, Ros- 
well B. Burchard, Joshua B. Richmond, and James E. 
Osborne Other committees and chairmen were named as 
follows: Reception. Deacon Geo. W. Church; entertainment, 
Mrs Oliver H. Wilbor; refreshments, Mrs. William H. 
Briggs; conveyance, Clarence C. Wordell; music, William 
H. Briggs; historical exhibit, Mrs. Forbes W. Manchester; 
finance, George Harlan Simmons; decorations, Henry A. 

Groth. 

The entire church and congregation, as well as many 
summer residents enthusiastically co-operated and by their 
unstinted generosity and labor helped to make the pre- 
parations complete. 

On the day of the celebation, the weather being favor- 
able large audiences assembled, forenoon, afternoon and 
evening in the auditorium which had been beautifully de- 
corated with flowers, green pine and the Stars and Stripes. 

Among those present were Miss Flora L. Mason and Miss 
Montgomery, of Taunton, and Rev. William J. Batt, of Con- 
cord Mass., descendants of Rev. Richard Billings, first 
pastor of the church; Miss Helen L. Shepard and Miss 
Fanny W. Burr, of Melrose, Mass., grand-nieces of Rev. 
Mase Shepard third pastor of the church; Rev. Augustus 
M. Rice, of Dunstable, Mass.; Rev. William D. Hart, of 
Wilton, Conn. ; Rev. Thomas F. Norris of Riverside, R. I., 
and Rev. James Lade, of Hanover, Mass., these being the 
four living ex-pastors of the church; the Hon. Lucius F. C. 
Garvin, Governor of Rhode Island who made congratulatory 
remarks, and Rev. Albert H. Plumb, D. D., pastor of the 



6 INTRODUCTORY. 

Walnut Avenue Congregational Church, Boston ; Rev. J. H. 
Lyon, of Central Falls, who brought the greetings of the 
sister churches of the Congregational order in the state; 
Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Slicer, minister of All Souls' Church, 
New York; Rev. Martin L. Williston, of Barrington; Rev. 
Edgar F. Clark, of the Methodist Episcopal Church in this 
town, and Mr. Horace G. Shaw, of New Jersey. 

There were present many other distinguished visitors as 
well as a large number of summer residents. The towns- 
people were numerously represented in the audience, taking 
a deep interest in honoring the church that to their fathers 
had been the gate to heaven throughout many generations. 

The exercises began at 10.30 a. m., Mrs. Henry A. Groth 
presiding at the organ, and the order of exercises as found 
on a subsequent page was carried out. 

During the intermissions for refreshments many availed 
themselves of the opportunity to visit the Grange Hall, 
where was exhibited a remarkable collection of antique 
furniture and many articles of historic interest from 
families in the town. 

Of the addresses which followed only the historical dis- 
course and the historical address are printed in full. Of 
some of the others, delivered without manuscript, it has been 
impossible to reproduce more than an abstract. 

Mr. Burchard's address contains some material that he 
had prepared but which for lack of time was omitted in the 
delivery. This material is inserted at the request of the 
committee. The sermon by Dr. Plumb was replete with 
anecdote and illustration, but being delivered without 
notes, it has been impossible to reproduce more than an 
abstract. In general it may be stated that many items 
of interest have been omitted from other addresses for the 
reason that they already appear in the published report of 
the proceedings of the 175th anniversary. 



COMMITTEES. 



General Committee. 

KEV. WILSON K. BUXTON, ROSWBL„ B^BuECHAED, 

D..CON EEABTUS S. BAILED, JoSHUA B. ElCHMOND, 

J. WBBSTKE COOMBS, J-^^^S E. OSBOEN. 

JSeoep«o«-DEACON George W. Chuecb Deacon Tho^ 

HOWAEB, AaTHOE SeaBUBV, HeNE. PaOE W,LB.E THOMAS 

Beiggs James I. Bailey, Charles Bone, Galen T. Beown 
elT MiBS Aedelia W.lbue, Mkb. Caeoline Tolleb, ME3. 

SiBAH CHABE, MiSS MiEAKBA PlEECE, MeB. DeBOHAH 

Otib, Mes. Saeah Boeden, Meb. J. I. ^"^^^""^ «„ f ™- 
MONS G. M. Geay, Nath. Church, Mes. Mart N. Beiggb, 
Mr'THOMAB BEIGGS, Meb. Isaac C. Wilboue, meb. bene. 
Page Wilbue, Mrs. Cheibtiana Beownell Mes. G. 1. 
BEOWNELL, MRS. L.zziE McFarland, Mes. John beown 
Mes Ciiaeleb Bone, M.bb Alice C. Geay, Miss Ethel 

WORDELL MES. F. k. BEOWNELL, JE., M.SS CHAELOTXe 

beownell, MES. F. U Patten, Meb. J. B. S.einger, Meb. 
Lysander W. Manchester. 

Retrcs,.nent^M... W. H. Beiggs, Meb^A. B. Simmons, 
MES. Nath. Chuech, Mes. E. S. Bailey, Mes. f-^-^^^' 
Mrs .J. W. COOMBS, Mrs. J. B. Wilboe, Mes. J. W. Hdnt 
MR F. L. Sherman, Mrs. Elva Humphrey Mrs. George 
Shaw Mrs. Saeah Bundy, Meb. Haeey McFarland, M.sb 

EEBECCA TEIPP, MEB. W. C. WiLBCE, MlBS FaNNIE BEOWN 

Meb E W. Meebey, Miss Bessie Hunt, Mrs. Lester Sea- 
BLEY MISS ETHEL Snell, M.SS Annie Dyer, Miss Alice 
Gray Miss Lilian Dunbae, Miss Ethel Wordell, Lester 
WiLBUB. LESLIE B. coombs, Elton Geay, Haeley Davib 
HOMEE Davis, Aethue Seabuey, Allen Seabuey, Robert 
Shaw, Karl F. Wordell. 



8 



COMMITTEES. 



Entertainment— F. H. Wilbour, Mrs. O. H. Wilbor, Mrs. 
P. H. WiLBOuR, Mrs. F. A. H. Bodington, Miss Mary K. 
Seabury, Mrs. Annie D. Brownbll, Mrs. Caroline Drum- 

MOND. 

Conveyance— Glarknce C. Wordbll, John W. Hunt, 
Horace F. Dyer, Oliver H. Wilbor, D. F. Gifford, Philip 
W. Almy, Don H. Gray, Herbert W. Pierce, F. A. H. Bod- 
iNGTON, Frederick L. Sherman, William C. Wilbur, James 
B. Springer. 

Finance— George H. Simmons, F. R. Brownell, Jr., L. 
W. Manchester, Frank W. Tripp, Harry McFarland, 
Charles Humphrey. 

Music—WihLiAM H. Briggs, J. G. Hathaway, Mrs. H. 
A. Groth, Mrs. C. C. Wordell, Mrs. D. Frank Gifford^ 
Mrs. p. W. Almy, Mrs. Herbert Pierce, Miss Elizabeth 
F. Sowlb, E. W. Mersey, Miss Lilian Dunbar. 

Decorations— Henry A. Groth, Mrs. Lydia J. Warner, 
Roy M. Gray, Miss A. A. Lathrop, Mrs. F. W. Tripp. 

Histoncal Exhibit— Mrs. Forbes W. Manchester, Mrs. 
R. B. Burchard, Mrs. Lysander W. Manchester. 



ORDER OF EXERCISES. 



10.30 A. M. 

Organ Voluntary. 
Welcome, by the Pastor. 

Anthem, "Oh, How Lovely,"— W. A. Ogden. 
Responsive Reading, led by Rev. Augustus M. Rice. 
Prayer, by Rev. William D. Hart. 
Hymn, " O God, Our Help in Ages Past." 
Historical Discourse, " The Little Compton United Con- 
gregational Church," by the Pastor, Rev. Wilson R. Buxton. 
Hymn, " O God, Beneath Thy Guiding Hand." 
Addresses, by former Pastors : 

Rev. Augustus M. Rice, 
Rev. William D. HapvT, 
Rev. Thomas F. Norris, 
Rev. James Lade. 
Hymn, "Blest be the Tie that Binds." 
Doxology. 

A Collation served in the Vestry after the morning Ser- 
vice. Historical Exhibit in the Grange HaU. 



2.30 P. M. 



Organ Voluntary. 

Anthem, "Rock of Ages,"— E. O. Excell. 

Prayer, by Rev. James Lade. 

Hymn, " My Faith Looks up to Thee." 

Address, by Rev. J. H. Lyon. 

Solo, by Mrs. Walter J. Bullock. 



10 ORDER OF EXERCISES. 

Address, by His Excellency Hon. Lucius F. C. Garvin, 
Governor of Rhode Island. 

Historical Discourse, " The Town of Little Compton," by 
Roswell B. Burchard. 

Hymn, " My Country, 'tis of Thee." 

Addresses, by: 

Rev. Thomas R. Slicer, D. D., 
Rev. Edgar F. Clark, 
Rev. Martin L. Williston, 
Rev. William J. Batt, 
Mr. Horace G. Shaw. 
Hymn, " I love Thy Kingdom, Lord." 



A Collation in the Vestry and an Historical Exhibit in the 
Grange Hall. 



7.30 P. M. 
Organ Voluntary. 
Invocation. 

Scripture Reading, by Rev. Thomas F. Norris. 
Anthem, " Nearer, My God, to Thee," — John R. Sweeney. 
Prayer, by Rev. Augustus M. Rice. 
Hymn, " Rock of Ages." 
Sermon, by Rev. Albert H. Plumb, D. D. 
Hymn, " All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." 
Benediction, by Rev. Dr. Plumb. 




Rev. Wilson R. Buxton 
Pastor 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE' 

THE LITTLE COMPTON UNITED CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. 
By Rev. Wilson R. Buxtox. 



When Ruth in company with her mother-in-law Naomi 
had come from the land of Moab to Bethlehem and had seen 
the grain-fields of Boaz and the reapers in them, her wish 
was, "Let me now go to the field and glean among the 
ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor." 
And Naomi said unto her, "Go, my daughter. And she went, 
and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers." And 
when Boaz had come from Bethlehem, he said unto Ruth, 
"Go not to glean in another field, neither pass from hence. 
Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and go 
thou after them." "And at meal time Boaz said unto her, 
Come hither and eat the bread, and dip thy morsel in 
the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers; and they 
reached her parched grain, and she did eat, and was sufficed, 
and left thereof. And when she was risen up to glean, 
Boaz commanded his young men, saying, let her glean 
even among the sheaves, and reproach her not: And also 
pull out some for her from the bundles, and leave it, and 
let her glean, and rebuke her not." 

It is, I confess, with feelings not unlike those which 
Ruth must have experienced that the historian this morn- 
ing, with sickle in hand, enters this field of fact and anec- 
dote with reference to the history of the Little Compton 
Congregational Church. For the field is very extensive, 
and a number of Boaz's skilled reapers, by name. Hart, 
Shepard, Palmer, Dexter, Walker, Goldsmith, and Beach, 
have already preceded me. And yet, taking my place to- 
day, I am encouraged by the thoughts that here and there I 

(') In the preparation of this historical discourse the author's thanks have been 
especially due to some elderly people in town at whose feet he sat while they 
unrolled the past and related to him the traditions of the elders. 



12 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

shall find some barley standing that the sickles of these 
reapers have missed; that these gentlemen will grant me, 
as the reapers of Boaz granted to Ruth, the privilege of 
gleaning even among the sheaves that they have sickled, 
and will not reproach me for it; that they will allow me 
even to pull some from the bundles that tliey have cut 
and tastefully bound, and that at noon I also shall be called 
to eat of the bread and parched barley and dip my morsel in 
the vinegar. It is with such feelings of alternate discour- 
agement and joy that I enter to glean after the reapers who 
have preceded me by the space of twent^'-five years. 

It is now 1674. Fifty-four years have gone by since the 
Pilgrim fathers and mothers landed at Plymoutli Rock. 
They have sought in their own way to win the Indians to 
Christ; and when they have won a small number of them 
about Plymouth, and killed a far greater number, the}' pro- 
ceed to increase the sphere of their religious influence. So 
that it is not to be wondered at that they meditate the con- 
version of the aborigines in this remote region, and espe- 
cially their great chieftain Philip living at a place since 
known as Bristol. And in his "Historical Collections of 
the Indians in New England," Gookin thus writes : ''There 
are some that have hopes of their greatest and chiefest Sa- 
chem, named Philip, living at Pockanockett. Some of his 
chief men, as I hear, stand well inclined to hear the gospel : 
and himself is a person of good understanding and knowl- 
edge in the best things. I have heard him speak very good 
words, arguing that his conscience is convicted ; but yet, 
though his will is bowed to embrace Jesus Christ, his sens- 
ual and carnal lusts are strong bonds to hold him fast un- 
der Satan's dominions." And in a letter written Septem- 
ber 14, 1674, by Reverend John Cotton, pastor of the Eng- 
lish church at Plymouth, to Daniel Goodkin, magistrate, 
living in Cambridge, occurs the following: "When the 
courts are here there are usually great multitudes of Indi- 
ans from all parts of the Colony. At those seasons I 
preach to them; which I mention, because God hath so far 
blessed it, as to make it a means to encourage some that live 
very remote, to effect praying to God ; viz., Manmanenat, Sa- 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 13 

chem of Sokonnett [Little Compton], and some principal 
Indians of Coquitt, who made their confessions, and de- 
clared their willingness to serve God; and they do improve 
all the opportunities they can get to hear the word. They 
came to hear me at Acushnett, when I preached there; and 
do desire further means of instruction." ^ 

But in another sense the colony at Plymouth is a believer 
in expansion ; for " in 1672 a grant is obtained by cer- 
tain individuals from the General Court at Plymouth 
of a certain tract of land called b}^ the Indians 
Sogkonate^ lying on the east of Narragansett Bay, 
adjoining the bay and ocean, with the view of making 
it their permanent place of residence. Col. Benjamin 
Church, of Duxbury, repairs thither in 1G74, and, having 
purchased land for a plantation, erects a house and build- 
ings thereon. In June of the following year, Philip, the 
great Sachem of Pockanockett, declares war on the colon- 
ists, and Colonel Church, by reason of the hostility of the 
Sogkonate Indians, leaves his plantation and repairs to the 
colonists on the island of Khode Island. After this war, 
which terminates with the death of Philip in 1G7G, some 
white people emigrate to Sogkonate from Plymouth and 
Rhode Island colonies, and six years later this tract of 
land is organized into a township by the name of Little 
Gompton"- — the same 3'ear in which Philadelphia is 
founded by William Penn. 

Now just as one fragment from the granite rock contains 
all the essential characteristics of the original mass, so 
these settlers in Little Compton from Plymouth and else- 
where are imbued with the same ideas that are cherished by 
those kinsmen whom they have left; and, therefore, among 
the fundamental conditions for a vigorous community, they 
recognize the ministrations of the gospel and the establish- 
ment of a church. In accordance with this desire, "when 
the town is incorporated in 1682," as the Rev. William Em- 
erson, the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, informs us, "a 
right of land is granted to the exclusive use of the minis- 



(') Gookin's Historical Collections of the Indians in New England; Mass. Hist. 
Coll. I. Series, 1-2, pg. 199. 

(2) Manual of The Little Compton United Congregational Church. 



14 BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

try. This right is a thirty-second part of the whole town. 
Notwithstanding the appropriation, part of it by some 
means early got into the hands of the town, now [1803] re- 
mains there, and, from the circumstances of its alienation, 
is called Pilfershire.'" ^ And further, at the General Court 
held at Plymouth the second day of June, 1685, it is "or- 
dered that Little Compton and the villages belonging to ye 
constablerick, pay this year fifteen pounds, to be raised ac- 
cording to law, for the encouragement of some to preach 
the Word of God among them, or otherwise to be disposed 
of, according as the law hath provided." -^ 

But even the presence here of a goodly number of Pil- 
grims and their descendants, together with the grant of 
land and the vote of money, is not adequate to the dispens- 
ing of the gospel to the community. For how are they to 
hear without a preacher? And a preacher is not long in 
coming to them. For "Eliphalet Adams is chosen their re- 
ligious teacher, in public town meeting, Sept. 7, 1697, and 
continues his labors until Sept. 21, 1700. On November 
the first, the Rev. Peter Thatcher, of Middleborough, Mass., 
and the Rev. John Danforth, of Taunton, visit this town 
and preach, and on the Sabbath following they administer 
the ordinance of baptism to sixty-five persons. In June, 
1701, John Clarke is chosen minister,"^ who continues his 
labors for but five months, and is then succeeded by Richard 
Billings, Nov. 14, 1701, the same year in which Yale College 
is founded. Mr. Billings performs his duties as a religious 
teacher "to the satisfaction of the pious and well disposed," 
and in the autumn of 1704, a letter missive is sent to some 
neighboring churches requesting that they assemble in this 
town by their elders and messengers in order that Mr. Bill- 
ings may be ordained and some individuals, who have signi- 
fied their intention so to do, may enter into covenant with 
the Lord and with one another. The elders and messengers 
assemble Nov. 30, 1704, and on that day Mr. Billings is or- 
dained and this church is organized with ten male members. 

(•) Notes on Little Compton, by Rev. William Emerson. Mass. Hist. Society Col 
lection, 1803. 

(-) Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. VI, pg. 170. 

(?) Manual of the Little Compton United Congregational Church. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 15 

And who is this young man thus ordained and installed 
first pastor of the Congregational Church in this town? 
And of what caliber and character are these ten men, — Wil- 
liam Pabodie, Thomas Gray, William Pabodie, Jun., Joseph 
Blackman, James Bennett, Joseph Church, Jonathan Dav- 
enport, John Palmer, John Church and Sylvester Rich- 
mond? And what are the times in which this company, 
building more largely than they know, embark on their 
great enterprise? As to the times, it may be said that in 
1704 Salem has for twelve years been resting from her 
witch-hanging business; that Cotton Mather is preaching 
in Boston ; that Jonathan Edwards is a little boy, one year 
old, at East Windsor, Connecticut, destined to become, 
according to Mr. John Fiske, *'the greatest intelligence of 
the western world;" that Massachusetts has seventy-six 
Congregational churches and eight Indian churches, Con- 
necticut thirty-five Congregational churches, New Hamp- 
shire, seven ; Maine, two ; Boston, one Episcopal church and 
two Baptist churches, Rhode Island two or three Baptist 
churches, ^ and that in the last named State there are to 
welcome this newborn daughter of Plymouth four sister 
Congregational churches — the Newman Church at East 
Providence and those at Barrington, Bristol, and Kingston. 
And as to the men thus constituted a church, these bear 
Pilgrim names (one of them having married a daughter of 
John Alden and Priscilla Mullins), are Puritan in faith, 
and are destined to play a leading part in the growth of the 
town and the church. And of the minister thus authorized 
to marry and administer the ordinances, it may be said 
that he comes from Dorchester, Mass., has probably been 
born in England, is a graduate of Harvard College, with 
the class of 1698, and is not altogether devoid of personaJ 
charms, since Awashonks, the squaw — Sachem of the Sog- 
konate Indians, expresses to him her strong desire that he 
become the Sachem-Consort of the tribe, and is much sur- 
prised and mortified to learn that he prefers the position he 
already holds. - 



(1) Congregationalists in America, by Rev. A. E. Dunning, D. D., pg. 203. 
{») From letter from Miss Flora L. Mason of Taunton. 



16 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

And what is the significance of this ecclesiastical union 
of the young Englishman and the ten Pilgrim descendants? 
First of all, Mr. Billings now has the power to marry the 
swains and sweethearts when they apply to him. Hitherto 
during the three years he has served the people as their re- 
ligious teacher he has in this respect been at a serious dis- 
advantage. For, on the second of October, 1689, at Ply- 
mouth, ''Mr. Joseph Church is authorized by this Court to 
solemnize marriages in the Town of Little Compton until 
this Court shall otherwise order,"* And this Joseph Church, 
with respect to the matrimonial business, has a start of 
Mr. Billings by fifteen years and a lead of twenty-eight 
marriages. But the minister loses no time making a begin- 
ning. On the seventh of December, following his ordina- 
tion November thirtieth, he unites in holy matrimony Sus- 
ana Wilcox and Jonathan Head. Thenceforth there is a 
lively competition, first, between the minister and Joseph 
Church, then between the minister and Col. Benjamin and 
Thomas Church, and later between him and Sylvester and 
William Richmond. But Mr. Billings finishes the race in 
1748 with a long lead over his successive competitors, he 
having at least two hundred and forty-two marriages to his 
crtdit in this town alone. 

Then, too, in other ways the minister is equally stirring. 
He has some knowledge of medicine; and since, according 
to tradition, his residence is near the northeast corner of 
the Common, thither we can imagine his parishioners com- 
ing for succor to both soul and body. In 1723 the congre- 
gation votes to build a new meeting house "42 feet long, 38 
feet wide and 20 feet between joists."^ The edifice is com- 
pleted and the first meeting held in it on the last Saturday 
in 1724. The year previous Increase Mather dies in Bos- 
ton, declaring that "there is a grievous decay of piety in the 
land and a leaving of the first love, and the beauties of holi- 
ness are not to be seen as they once were. The very inter- 
est of New England seems to be changed from a religious 



(>) Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. VII, pg. 218. 

(') Record of the One Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary Celebration, pg. 12. 



-=■ r 




CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 17 

to a worldly one." ^ Yet this is not true of the state of re- 
ligion in Little Compton. For here there is a turning of 
many to righteousness. The next year after Mr. Billings 
is ordained, the Priscillas of the parish, recognizing that in 
Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, male nor fe- 
male, begin to come into the church, heirs with the Aquil- 
las, their husbands and brothers, of the same promise. Nor 
are the Indians neglected. These swarthy residents are 
accustomed to assemble together for worship. They meet 
in a building of their own, and "once a month, on the Lord's 
Day, the minister instructs them." So the good work goes 
forward under the leadership of this man of God, the Lord 
adding from time to time of such as are being saved, until 
the year 1742-43, when, New England being already 
awakened by the great revival at Northampton under Ed- 
wards, and being further stirred by the appeals of George 
Whitfield, then visiting the colonies, this parish, remote 
from the centers of religious excitement, itself begins pow- 
erfully to feel the throbbeat of the divine life, and seventy- 
five souls are added to the church in demonstration of the 
truth that ''My word shall not return unto me void, but it 
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper 
in the thing whereto I sent it." And so it is not surpris- 
ing that interest in religion extends beyond Compton; so 
that August eighteenth, 1746, eight male and fifteen female 
members are dismissed from this church to be organized 
into a church in an adjoining town. These twenty-three 
disciples take what falleth to them and depart, not into a 
far country, but to Tiverton. Nor do they spend their 
goods in riotous living. The church there is our own 
daughter, the branch of our planting. 

But the time draws nigh when the good man and faithful 
shepherd must depart out of this world. He has received 
one hundred and ninety-six members into the church. He 
has baptized seven hundred and twenty eight. He has min- 
istered to the sick, comforted the dying, preached the gos- 
pel to the poor, and now, in the year 1748, in a good old age, 



(1) Concjrerjationalists in America, by Rev. A. E. Dunning, D. D., pg-. 232. 



18 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

he is gathered to his fathers, and what is mortal is buried 
beside the church he loved so well. 

It is now 1749. Washington is a youth of seventeen 
years in Virginia, destined to lead the armies of the Revo- 
lution. Faneuil Hall, Boston, the cradle of American lib- 
erty, has been built but seven years. Three years ago the 
boundary line was settled between the Massachusetts and 
the Rhode Island Colony when Little Compton, together 
with other towns to the north and northwest, becomes a 
part of the Colony of Rhode Island. Edwards is still 
preaching at Northampton. There are in this town ten 
hundred and four whites, sixty-two negroes, and eighty-six 
Indians. ^ The church hears at least two candidates, a Mr. 
Brown, and Jonathan Ellis. The former for a time 
''preaches half the day on Lord's Days with Mr. Ellis," but 
is not permanently retained. Of the personality of Mr. El- 
lis we have only a meager account. But in "Sketches of 
Ministers,"- written by Emerson Davis and preserved in 
his own handwriting, occurs the following: ''Reverend 
Jonathan Ellis of Sandwich, Mass., graduated from Har- 
vard in 1737, and was ordained pastor of the Second Church 
in Plymouth, Mass., November eighth, 1738, when he was 
but twenty-one years old. Being naturally earnest, he be- 
came exceedingly enthusiastic, and said so many extrava- 
gant things that the people became disaffected and he was 
dismissed October thirty-first, 1749." He is installed pas- 
tor of this church December fifth of the same year. 

For thirty-six years Mr. Ellis continues pastor of the 
church. During this time he marries almost two hundred 
couples, but he receives into the church only twenty-six 
members. I shall attempt no explanation of this poor nu- 
merical showing except to say that, while political agita- 
tion, Sabbath desecration, the corruption of public morals 
and the dissemination of atheistic doctrines doubtless re- 
tard the spiritual work, here as elsewhere, the most ade- 
quate explanation is probably that the minister and his 



(1) Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. V : pg. 270. 

(2) Sketches of Ministers, by Rev. Emerson Davis, Congregational Library, Bos- 
ton. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 19 

people do not launch out into the deep and cast their net at 
the right side of the boat. Be this as it may, as a result 
of the decline in the membership of the church during this 
long pastorate, it after a time comes to pass that there are 
few male members in the church. But men a parish must 
have to attend to its husiness. And many good, straight- 
forward men Little Compton has at this time : only they are 
not members of the church, and there is no telling when 
they will be. So the idea is conceived, or rather, it is ap- 
propriated — for it is not new — that there shall be a society 
composed of the gentlemen of the parish who wish to join 
it, and that this society shall have charge of the property 
of the parish and manage the finances. And right here, in 
this psychological pass to which Ellis and his people have 
come, is the genesis of The United Congregational Society 
which is organized in February, 1785, under a charter 
granted by the State of Rhode Island "for the i)urpose of 
raising a fund, by free and voluntary subscriptions, contri- 
butions, legacies and donations, for the support of public 
worship by the Congregational Society [now known as the 
United Congregational Church], in the town of Little 
Compton aforesaid, of which Reverend Jonathan Ellis is 
the present pastor." ^ The granting of this charter, in 
answer to the petition of forty-six gentlemen of the i)arish, 
is the last important event connected with the church that 
transpires during his pastorate. For fifteen years Mr. El- 
lis has been a near neighbor of the eminent Dr. Samuel 
Hopkins, of Newport. The conflict between England and 
France for political supremacy east of the Mississippi and 
the War of the Revolution pass into history during the resi- 
dence of this good man here; and now, on September sev- 
enth, 1785, just one hundred and nineteen years ago to-day, 
he dies, his body is buried near the grave of Mr. Billings, 
and when he dies, there is in the nearby town of Newport 
a lovable little boy, but five years old, and destined power- 
fully to influence New England and the world, and his 
name is William Ellery Channing. 

The church is now without a pastor for a year and a half. 

(') Charter of the United Congregational Society. 



20 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

It is during this interim that Adam Simmons, a Justice of 
the Peace, reaps a rich harvest in marriage fees. But said 
Adams Simmons soon comes to grief; for January, 1787, a 
young man, Mase Shepard by name, is called. This gentle- 
man is a native of Norton, Mass., where he was born in 
1759, is a graduate of Dartmouth College, has studied the- 
ology with Kev. E. Judson, of Taunton, and is, or is to be- 
come — I have not learned which — a brother-in-law of the 
father of Kalph Waldo Emerson. But the problem of se- 
curing a parsonage, in which the new minister is to live, 
now engages the attention of the parish during the interval 
before his installation; and as to the manner in which this 
question is handled, the following extract from the Records 
of the Colony of Rhode Island, truly photographic of the 
sentiment in many churches at this time, speaks most elo- 
quently: ''Whereas the United Congregational Society in 
the town of Little Compton, x>referred a petition and repre- 
sented unto this assembly that God, in his providence, hav- 
ing taken from them their late pastor, Jonathan Ellis, by 
death, they have unanimously made choice of a young gen- 
tleman to preach the Gospel to them; that the calamities 
of the time, and the want of a sufficient fund to support a 
minister, necessitate them to pray this Assembly to grant 
them the benefit of a lottery, for raising the sum of six 
hundred pounds, of the paper money of this State, for the 
purpose of building a parsonage house in the said town, for 
the said Society; and that Messrs. Perez Richmond, George 
Simmons, Nathaniel Church, David Stoddard, Nathaniel 
Searle, and John Davis may be appointed managers thereof; 
which being duly considered, 

"It is voted and resolved, that the prayer of the said pe- 
tition be granted; that the said Society be empowered to 
set forth a lottery for the purpose of raising the sum of six 
hundred pounds, lawful money, for building a parsonage 
house for the said Society in the said town; that the said 
Perez Richmond, Etc., be, and they are, hereby appointed 
managers of the said Lottery, and empowered to agree on 
a scheme for the same ; provided, they shall previously give 
bond to the Treasurer of the State, in a sum double the 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 21 

amount of said scheme, for the faithful performance of 
their said trust; and that no expense accrue thereon to the 
State." 1 

The Rev. Dr. Hopkins, of Newport, is Moderator of the 
Council which on September nineteenth, 1787, ordains the 
gentleman recently engaged to preach ; and we are informed 
that between the sessions of the Council refreshments are 
served at the house of Capt. George Simmons, which, in 
harmony with the customs of the day, include ''four gallons 
of rum, three gallons of wine, one gallon of brand}^, one 
hundred and forty-five pounds of veal, twenty pounds of 
ham, twelve pounds of pork, fourteen pounds of beef," and 
various other good things. But that the young minister, 
the traditions of the elders to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing, touched not either the rum, wine or brandy, is evident 
from the solemn statement (not made under oath) of his 
famous and lamented son, the late Prof. Shepard, that "My 
father never gave or accepted any form of distilled liquor 
in his intercourse with his people."^ 

Mase Shepard is now the ordained pastor of this church, 
Only two days ago, that is, September seventeenth, 1787, 
the Constitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia 
and presided over by the illustrious Washington, after four 
months' deliberation, adjourns, having completed its great 
work and framed our Federal Constitution. But, of course, 
Mr. Shepard is not aAvare of tliat. Nor does he know that 
ere long a terrible catastrophe, to be known to future ages 
as the French Revolution, will convulse all Europe. Any- 
how, he does know that his duty is to do with all his might 
whatsoever his hand findeth to do. And so, constitutions 
and revolutions to one side for the present, he goes to work 
with singleness of purpose. He looks over the town and 
finds that it has a white population which may be divided 
as follows: Two hundred and ninety-nine males and two 
hundred and eighty-two females under sixteen years of age; 
fortv-six males and sixtv-two females between sixteen and 



(1) Records of The Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. X, pg. 232. 

(=) One Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary Record, pg. 58. 



22 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

twenty-two; one hundred and ninety males and two hun- 
dred and thirty-three females between twenty-two and fifty ; 
seventy-six males and one hundred and six females upwards 
of fifty. There are also in town about a dozen Indians and 
thirty-four negroes — in all, thirteen hundred and fifty 
souls. ^ And the one point in the parish to which, next the 
church, the people look, as to a rock in a weary land, 
is that place where the pastor resides, first, about a half 
mile north of the Common, and afterward a short distance 
south of the Common, where subsequently is the home of 
Deacon Isaac B, Richmond. Thither the thoughts and 
steps of the people go, and thence to the people speed the 
love, sympathy and watchfulness of the pastor. 

The personality of Mr. Shepard is one of the finest com- 
pounds of human excellence this place has ever known. He 
is described as ''a man of jjeculiar sociability, amiability 
and dignity," and is of commanding presence and powerful 
voice. He is fond of children and baptizes a great many 
of them. It is said that, often when calling in his parish, 
meeting a boy or girl in the road, Mr. Shepard would stop 
and inquire, ''Well, whose boy are you?" or "Whose girl are 
you?" and when told, would say, "I hope you will grow up 
to be a better man than your father is," or "I hope you will 
grow to be a better woman than your mother is." Like 
Origen. who. first at Alexandria, and afterward at Caesa- 
rea, instructed the youth who came to him in great num- 
bers, this godly man, though ''not a close student,"- is 
wont, on a smaller scale, to imbue the young men of this 
region with the doctrines of the gospel, some finding his 
tutorship a gateway to the ministry. He is associated with 
Samuel Hopkins and William Patten in the formation of 
the Rhode Island Missionary Society, and on the death of 
Dr. Hopkins is chosen President of that Society. There 
are one hundred and six marriages credited to him on the 
books of the town. One hundred members are admitted 
during the first eighteen years of his pastorate. In 1806 
the great revival comes, and in one year one hundred and 



(1) Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. IX, pg. 653. 

(') Sketches of Ministers by Rev. Emerson Davis, Congregational Library, Boston. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 23 

six more are added. The discipline is enforced. Com- 
plaints are brought before the church at different times 
charging one brother with breach of promise, which is not 
sustained ; another with breach of marriage contract, which 
is sustained; another with injuring his brother in his 
worldly interest, which is not sustained. And it is during 
this pastorate that Lemuel Sisson, wife and eleven children 
come over from Newport and locate at Seaconnet Point. 
There in their house the ilrst Methodist meeting in town is 
held. In 1820 they begin to hold preaching services. In- 
terest increases and an edifice is erected in 1825. Hence- 
forth Israel is divided, not geograpMcalli/, but psycholog- 
ically; and to the credit of our Methodist brethren be it 
said that they have been very zealous for the God of their 
fathers and have set up idolatrous shrines neither at 
Dan nor Bethel. It is also during this pastorate that the 
American Board is organized, the mission to the Hawaiian 
Islands established, Andover, Yale and Bangor Theological 
Seminaries founded, while the controversy between Trini- 
tarians and Unitarians in New England goes on in earnest. 
And this wonderful man, having seen the glory of the Lord 
revealed at home and abroad, dies February fourteenth, 
1821, in the sixty-second year of his age, and less than three 
months before the conqueror of Europe passes away at St. 
Helena. The body of Mr. Shepard is buried beside the 
church he has led from strength to strength. 

Thus far, during the one hundred and seventeen years 
since the organization of the church, but three ministers 
have been shepherd to this people. Now begins the period 
of relatively short pastorates. During the next forty-six 
years five men successively minister to the parish — Emer- 
son Paine, Samuel W. Colburne, Alfred Goldsmith, Samuel 
Beane and Nathaniel Beach. Mr. Paine graduates from 
Brown University in 1813, studies theology with Dr. Em- 
mons at Franklin, is ordained at Middleborough in 1816, 
and comes to this town in 1822. Two years before his ar- 
rival the population reaches its highest point, the census of 



24 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

1820 giving fifteen hundred and eighty souls to Little Comp- 
ton.i 

The new minister brings with him a wife, whom he 
has found at Dighton. They live opposite the church, near 
where Mr. Bodington now resides. With respect to body 
Mr. Paine is short and stout. He is a very sober man, even 
despondent, often declaring when he comes from church 
Sunday that he does not see how he can ever preach 
another sermon. He is an able reasoner and a profound 
thinker. His sermons are very long — some say one hour 
and a half. A gentleman leaving the church at the close of 
a Sunday afternoon service is heard to remark, "Well, he 
has preached the hens to roost this time." He is loved by 
many, respected by all, though not a favorite with everyone. 
Prayer meetings are held at the homes of the people, and 
always announced to ''begin at early candle lighting." The 
church votes to revise the confession of faith, and a commit- 
tee is appointed for that purpose. The minister has a large 
Bible class that meets one of the weekday evenings. His 
influence is very great. The present edifice, except the tall 
steeple and basement, is erected in 1832. The same year the 
membership is two hundred and thirty-nine. Heretofore 
the church has lost relatively few members by their removal 
out of town. Now they begin frequently to be dismissed 
and recommended to churches in other towns and cities 
whither they have gone. "The Lord gave, and the Lord 
hath taken away." Mr. Paine, however, receives many into 
the church. The church of Christ throughout the world is 
beginning to manifest great interest in foreign missions. 
Those at Beirut, Syria; at Canton, China; in Western Tur- 
key, Siam, Singapore, Persia and West Africa are founded 
during this pastorate. And the heart of this church beats 
in unison with that of the Church universal, so that about 
this time "The Male and Female Missionary Society" is or- 
ganized. John C. Calhoun and other southerners are talk- 
ing secession, and the country is ringing with the peerless 
defense of the Union and the Constitution by Daniel Web- 
ster in the Senate at Washington. Mr. Paine resigns in 

(') Rhode Island Manual, 1904. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 25 

1834, and is succeeded by Mr. Colburne, who is tall and 
stout, jolly and pleasant, comfortable liimself, likes to see 
others comfortable, is a good speaker, never hurries his peo- 
ple, is liked by all, laughs jokingly at those who are anti- 
slavery in sentiment, and resigns in 1838, after three years' 
service. 

Mr. Goldsmith is now invited "to accept the pastoral of- 
fice of this Church and Society, with a salary of six hun- 
dred dollars annually, and the Parsonage added whenever 
you have a family," One year after the young preacher 
comes to town the annual Consociation of Congregational 
Churches of Rhode Island is held at Scituate, when the fol- 
lowing report is presented by the committee on desecration 
of the Sabbath and adopted by that body : "This Consocia- 
tion, feeling itself deeply grieved by repeated complaints 
of Sahhath desecration, through the delinquences of mem- 
bers of the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as 
others, traveling for purposes of business or pleasure on that 
holy (lay, do most solemnly and affectionately advise and 
exhort all the members of our churches wholly to abstain 
from, and discountenance all such traveling, eitlier by pri- 
vate conveyance or in public stages, steamboat or railroad 
cars. And so important do the Consociation deem this 
subject that they advise the churches to consider all mem- 
bers persisting in such delinquencies as proper subjects of 
reproof and admonition."^ 

The new minister is tall and slender, is a spiritual 
preacher, an active pastor, and soon becomes popular. 
The church has no organ. Mr. Goldsmith proposes that 
the society buy an organ. Objection is made that there is 
uo one to play it. "You get the organ, and I will furnish 
a player," replies the minister. And shortly he makes good 
his promise by marrying a young lady and bringing her to 
town. They live where Clarence C. Wordell and family 
now reside, the society having purchased that property 
during the pastorate of Mr. Colburne. The name of the 
minister's wife is Sarah ; and a good musician she is, and 



(') Minutes of the Evangelical Consociation of Congregational Churches of Rhode 
Island, 1841. 



26 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

often at the midweek service the minister turns and says^, 
''Sarah, sing Ariel : 

Oh, could I speak the matchless worth, 
Oh, could I sound the glories forth." 

The pews of the church hitherto have faced, and for some 
time after continue to face, southward. The colored peo- 
ple have seats reserved for them at the north end of the 
main galleries. They take their lunch between the Sunday 
services along the road now known as "Nigger Lane;" and 
the young white folks go down under the willows just north 
of the present parsonage to eat theirs. The question rela- 
tive to the use of wine at communion is agitating the 
church and it is voted to refer the question for decision to 
the Reverend Messrs. Fowler, of Fall River; Shepard, of 
Bristol, and Blodgett, of Pawtucket. The church makes 
some progress under the leadership of Mr. Goldsmith, but 
in one respect he is not abreast of the times. He does not 
approve of slavery ; nor does he disapprove of it. Many 
people in about all the churches at this time feel that the 
subject of slavery ought to have no reference made to it 
from the pulpit, because such reference causes trouble. 
Wendell Phillips tells Harvard after the War that from 
her foundation she has always been set flint-like against 
every great reform. The following letter is written in 
these circumstances and sent to the church in May, 1843 : 

"To the Memlers of The Congregational Church in Little 
Compton. 

"Dear Friends: The undersigned feel that they can no 
longer retain a conscience void of offense towards God or 
man, without addressing you on a subject which lies near 
our hearts. 

"In the course of the past winter a request signed by 
twelve of the church was made to your pastor to call a meet- 
ing of the church to consider the subject of slavery, and the 
duty of the church in relation to it. This he utterly re- 
fused to do, but suggested that a meeting might be called 
by the senior deacon of the church. Thereupon some of us 
requested Deacon Burgess to call a meeting of the church. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 27 

This he did, and, at the appointed time, those of us who 
could conveniently do so repaired to the meetinghouse, but 
what was our astonishment to find that with one consent 
our brethren and sisters had failed to meet us. This we 
consider a direct violation on 3'our part of jour covenant 
engagements to sympathize with, care for and watch over 
us, 

"In consequence of your wanton violation of your engage- 
ments, virtual rejection of us as brethren and sisters, re- 
fusal to communicate with us in relation to certain slan- 
derous reports which have been in circulation touching our 
character as abolitionists, and your manifest determina- 
tion to continue to countenance the awful iniquity of slav- 
ery, by holding in full communion and fellowship slavehol- 
ders, slaveholding churches and apologists for slavery, we 
feel it to be a solemn duty we owe to God, to ourselves, and 
to our crushed and suffering fellow creatures, to consider 
ourselves no longer members of the Congregational church, 
and to withhold from you as a church, all Christian com- 
munion, fellowship and support. 

"As this is probably the last time we shall ever address 
you as a church (unless you should repent and bring forth 
works meet for repentance in respect to the things men- 
tioned in this letter) we take this opportunity to say to 
you, that for all the offenses committed against us by the 
church, or by individual members, we tender you our cor- 
dial Christian forgiveness, and for all the offenses which we 
have committed against you, whether individually or as a 
church, we ask the same forgiveness which we extend to 

you. 

Thomas Burgess, Mercy Wilbour, 

Samuel S. Burgess, Lydia Burgess, 

James Bailey, Thankful Bailey, 

William Wood, Abagail Bailey, 

Joseph Coe, Ruth A. Bailey, 

David Shaw, Diana G. W^ood. 

Orein W. Simmons, Ann G. Tompkins, 
Ruth Burgess, Lydia Bailey, 

Mary Ann Taylor." ^ 

(') Letter In possession of Mr. Sidney R. Burleigli, of Providence. 



28 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

The same day the above communication is presented to 
the church, a committee is appointed to confer with the 
seventeen members who have withdrawn, and the follow- 
ing July fourth, 1843, a church meeting is held, Deacon 
Isaac B. Richmond in the chair, when, after a motion to im- 
mediately adjourn is defeated, the following resolution is 
presented and adopted : 

"Resolved. That in the judgment of this church the sys- 
tem of slavery, or buying and selling human beings for gain, 
and holding them in involuntary servitude, is a great polit- 
ical and moral evil, offensive to God and man, and as such 
we ought in all lawful ways to discountenance it and to seek 
its removal." Mr. Goldsmith resigns in June, of the follow- 
ing year. The dismissing Council speaks of him as ''An 
affectionate, faithful and devoted minister of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." He might have imitated the great Dr. Hopkins, 
who, sixty or seventy years before from his Newport pulpit, 
had boldly denounced human slavery and persuaded some 
of his parishioners to free their slaves ; but he did not. And 
after all, perhaps we ought to be tender in our judgment of 
those who failed to read aright the signs of the times; for 
human nature is to-day just as shirking and compromising 
as it was in 1843. And however desirable it may be, it is 
yet not to be expected that every man shall have the sub- 
lim.e moral vision and courage of a Martin Luther or an 
Abraham Lincoln. 

It is now 1844. Henry Ward Beecher is preaching at In- 
dianapolis, three years hence to come to Plymouth Church. 
Brooklyn. This church calls a Mr. Beane, and in 1846 it 
is voted unanimousy to install him and to give him a sal- 
ary of five hundred and seventy-five dollars, "together with 
the use of the parsonage place and society pew No. 62 for 
each calendar year, with leave of absence for three Sab- 
baths .... under the following conditions : That 
you pay all lawful taxes on said place, keep the walls, bars, 
gates, fences in good repair; also the internal parts of the 
buildings, painting included, and leave them when called to 
do so, in as good repair as when received, common wear ex- 
cepted." In his letter of acceptance, Mr. Beane says: 




Rev. Samuel Beane 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 29 

^'Having thus consented to become your pastor, I shall 
henceforward close my ears to all solicitations from other 
quarters, feel that you are my people, and endeavor, as much 
a^ in me lies, to promote your spiritual interests." 

The new minister is a lovable man. That very couple are in 
this audience whom Mr. Beane hegins marrying in West- 
port, Mass., and whom, after the marriage feast, he finishes 
marrying on the public highway just this side of the State 
line about a mile and a half to the eastward of the Little 
Compton Common. The mistress of the parsonage for sev- 
eral years has been principal of Wheaton Seminary at Nor- 
ton. Mrs. Beane attends the meetings of the Ladies So- 
ciable and the ladies read Uncle Tom's Cabin and other 
books at these gatherings. This leader among the Pris- 
cillas is accustomed to tell them how beautiful it is for the 
wife to submit to the husband, often quoting the words of 
Paul on that point: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your 
own husbands, as unto the Lord." But the ladies know 
that Mr. Beane submits to the will of his wife quite as much 
as she does to him. The minister takes a firm stand 
against slavery and is leader of the movement that culmi- 
nates in the planting of trees around the cemetery. 

But it is the more properly spiritual work of the church 
under this man's leadership for which his pastorate will 
ever be memorable. The church sends a conciliatory letter 
to the seventeen members who have withdrawn, and some 
of them resume their former relation. It is now voted that 
the name of the church be The United Congregational 
Church. A great revival comes in 1849-50. One Sunday 
is especially memorable for its solemnity. And as to the 
fruitage of the revival, I will let the report of the church to 
the State Conference this year speak: "Membership, 207. 
Amount raised for benevolent purposes, |400. A powerful 
work of divine grace has been vouchsafed to this church the 
past year, which has affected all ages and classes, and 
greatly increased the strength and numbers of the church. 
Sixty-five have already been added b}' profession, and others 
stand propounded, and others still will soon make a pro- 
fession. Congregations on the Sabbath increased and Sab- 



30 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

bath School flourishing."^ But the good man resigns in 

1856 on account of ill-health. At the request of his people, 
he takes some months' rest, but returns still of the opinion 
that he must go. He is loath to leave, and the people are 
loath to have him leave. Not since the death of the la- 
mented Mase Shepard have they been so deeply saddened at 
the prospect of parting with their pastor. He, however, in 

1857 takes final leave of his loving flock, who tell him that 
"in times of distraction and trial, he has been a wise coun- 
selor; in times of affliction, a great comforter; in times of 
prosperity, a most efficient aid." Webster, Clay and Cal- 
houn have gone. The Republican Party has been born, de- 
termined to resist the further extension of human slavery 
in America. The country is drifting toward civil war. For 
a time Mr. Beane is principal of the seminary at Beloit, 
Wisconsin, and later preaches some years at Norton, Mass., 
whence, in 1865, he is called to his eternal rest. 

The leadership of the church now passes to Nathaniel 
Beach. This gentleman comes here from Milbury, Massa- 
chusetts. He is a good preacher, a faithful pastor, and a 
social man among the people. It is said that no man ever 
came to town who made as good prayers as does Mr. Beach. 
He always says the right word to the sick. He does not, 
however, believe in women's speaking in meeting. Nor has 
he any fondness for the new theology. His Bible class num- 
bers from thirty to forty members. The benevolences are 
systematized in 1861 and the church votes to take period- 
ical collections for the different objects. The pews in the 
church which hitherto have faced southward now face north- 
ward. The church decides to have all the old records trans- 
cribed and appoints Isaac B. Richmond and John Church a 
committee to attend to the matter. The membership in 
1863 is one hundred and fifty-one. The Sabbath School 
numbers one hundred and seventy-three. The same year 
Mr. Beach reports to the State Conference as follows: 
"While there has been some increase in the Sabbath School, 
and hopeful indications at times in our community, we 
must report another year of spiritual dearth, — must say as 

(1) Minutes of the Evangelical Consociation of Rhode Island, June, 1850. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 31 

Simon once said to the Master, 'We have toiled all night and 
have taken nothing' — nothing from the world into the 
church. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of 
riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, have choked 
the word and rendered it unfruitful another year. But 
still there are those among us who labor and pray in hope 
that in due time we may be able to cast the net on the right 
side of the ship and gather a multitude for Christ."^ In 
another report to the State Conference he says that "the 
Sabbath School and the prayermeeting and the contribu- 
tions to the benevolent objects all feel the depressing in- 
fluence and prolonged spiritual declension. There is a 
lack of brotherly love — a disregard of covenant obligations 
— a neglect of the prescribed discipline of Christ's church — 
a general apathy and worldliness." This pessimistic tone 
pervades most of the annual reports of the church to the 
conference during this pastorate, so that quite naturally in 
18G6 the pastor persuades the church to supplement gospel 
with law by defining that clause in the rules that refers to 
''immoral conduct and breach of expressed covenant vows" 
as being ''the use of or traffic in intoxicating liquors as a 
beverage; the occupation of the hours of the Lord's Day 
with ordinary secular labor; or with visiting, or riding for 
pleasure; dancing and card playing and social amuse- 
ments." Mr. Beach resigns in 1867. His pastorate has 
c< vered the period of the Civil War when the national con- 
science has been illumined as never before and when men 
and battlefields have been making their names sacred in 
the annals of free government. He has received about fifty 
members into the churchy and the dismissing Council speaks 
of him as "a Christian gentleman, a ripe scholar, and a la- 
borious and faithful Christian minister." 

From 1867 to the present time no less than seven pastors 
successively lead this church ; and their periods of service 
are as follows: George F. Walker, 1867-72; Augustus M. 
Rice, 1873-75 ; William D. Hart, 1875-89 ; Thomas F. Norris, 
1889-91; James Lade, 1892-98; Charles D. Crawford, 1898- 
1900, when the present pastor takes up the work. The 

(') Minutes of the R. I. Conference of Congregational Cliurches, June, 1863. 



32 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

church and society vote to pay Mr. Walker a salary of ten 
hundred and fifty dollars, together with the use of the par- 
sonage place. But the minister, besides being a writer and 
preacher of ability, is somewhat of a mechanic; and soon 
after his arrival in town he expresses his desire for a new 
parsonage. In accordance with this wish, the old parson- 
age place is sold, land is bought and the present parish 
house built. Then as he and his people walk about Zion, 
they conceive the idea of raising the church, putting a ves- 
try underneath and building the tall steeple; and the same 
is undertaken. Mr. Walker helps shingle the renovated ed- 
ifice and he himself relates that one day the fog^ is so thick 
that he nails the shingles right on it. The new parsonage 
place becomes the scene of many delightful old ladies' par- 
ties in strawberry time. The rules of the church are re- 
vised and the church manual reprinted; and in 1871 the 
Sunday afternoon service that has come down from a for- 
mer time is, by vote of the church, discontinued. The pas- 
tor resigns in 1872 and a Mr. Wheeler is then offered the 
largest salary that has ever been offered any minister to 
come here — twelve hundred and fifty dollars, together with 
the use of the parsonage, — but he declines the call. 

Of the next four pastors and the work they did it 
would be pleasant to speak at length, did time per- 
mit; but they are all here and will speak for them- 
selves. Suffice it for me to say that Mr. Rice is 
remembered as a vigorous and spiritual preacher, 
and one who does much to start some people in 
the Christian life; that Mr. Hart is recalled as a gospel 
preacher, a devoted and wise pastor, and one who beautifies 
the parsonage grounds, does considerable to improve the 
singing and the Sunday School, organizes the Young People's 
Society of Christian Endeavor and materially adds to the 
church membership; that Mr. Norris is still thought of as 
one who has served as a youth in helping put down the Re- 
bellion, comes to this place full of the energy and enthusi- 
asm of the mission fields of Kansas, and always has a good 
sermon; and that Mr. Lade while here preaches practical 

(1) At times the fog in Little Compton is vei-y dense, completely enveloping the 
town. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 33 

sermons, renders efiBcient service as chorister and is a faith- 
ful visitor at the homes of the people. Reverend Charles 
D. Crawford, after graduating from college, completes his 
theological course at the Yale Divinity School. He serves 
as pastor of a church in Colorado and one in Kansas City, 
and then comes to Little Compton. He is a deep thinker, 
an earnest preacher, a sympathetic pastor, and a Christian 
gentleman. He is not puffed up, does not behave himself 
unseemly, seeks not his own, is not easily provoked, vaunts 
not himself, rejoices in the truth, and is very helpful and 
kind in his visits to the sick. ^ And the rest of the acts of 
these men, and of the church which they led, behold ! they 
are written in God's Book of Life! The present pastor 
comes to town in the autumn of 1900. Two preaching 
services on the Sabbath are maintained. The church man- 
ual is revised and reprinted. Over twenty members are re- 
ceived into the church. Land is purchased, sheds built, and 
other improvements made. 

Thus, during the two hundred years of the existence of 
our church men of varying individuality have preached 
from this pulpit. Some have been able expounders of the 
word of God. Others have excelled as pastors. This one 
has been conservative in theology; that one more liberal. 
Here was one w^ho was aggressive on questions of moral re- 
form ; there one who moved more slowly. And yet if all of 
these fifteen men, from Richard Billings down to the 
speaker, were here, not one of us could say to another, "I have 
had no need of thee;" for is it not true that the selfsame 
Spirit has worked in and through all these leaders, speak- 
ing the gentle word here, the strong word there; sounding 
the conservative note at this time, the progressive at that 
time; that so, in this place, in the lives of succeeding gene- 
rations of men and women, there might be reproduced all 
the elements of character that the Man of Galilee exempli- 
fied who was gentle as a mother and yet strong as the great 
reformer; and who, while believing that God did verily 
speak unto Moses and the prophets, himself knew the 
Father at first hand? And as the minister to-day looks 



C) Mr. Crawford passed away in New York City in May, 1904. 



34 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

through the records of the church during thi§ long period, 
seeing the prominent family names, some of which are now 
locally extinct ; as he sees pass before him the great throng 
who in this town have fought the good fight and kept the 
faith, and have here helped create, conserve and direct a 
strong and righteous public sentiment, while he is fully 
convinced that the members of this church during the two 
hundred years since its organization, in common with 
Christ's disciples everywhere, "have been touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities" and that "their hearts have often 
burned within them" as their shepherds "talked with them 
by the way," he jet cannot help saying of those shepherds, 
dead and living, "Blessed were your eyes when you saw and 
knew these men and women in Israel." And yet it will not 
do for an ancient church merely to thirst for the glad days 
of the past. For two things are demanded of every such 
church located in a New England town. First of all, both 
pastor and people must be able, intelligently and reverently, 
to appreciate the Past — since God has been in that Past — 
and understand what the men and women of New England 
have accomplished during the last two hundred and fifty or 
three hundred years, and the terrible sacrifices involved. 
Then they must be able to discern the potentialities of the 
Present, and know how these are to be changed into 
living facts. For during all the years since the first 
Puritan walked these shores and while our fathers were 
bringing forth in Yankeeland a civilization grand as the 
world has ever seen, the words of Scripture have always 
been true that "What is seen hath not been made out of 
things which appear." 

The people who worship in this historic place are now 
to begin the ascent of the third century of the noble career 
of their church. The world-view that greets their eyes 
differs materially from that which Pastor Billings and his 
people beheld. Then men had made no extensive critical 
study of the Bible. They knew little of the marvelous reve- 
lations of science. The ethnic religions had not been made 
to shed much light on the thought of the Apostle that whom 
the Athenians worshipped in ignorance, him Paul was de- 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 35 

daring unto them. The racial, political and commercial 
movements, which in our time are vehicles for a mightier 
inflow of the life of God, had not assumed present propor- 
tions. The larger joy of Christian toleration was not un- 
derstood. Today all this is changed. God has said to 
humanity, "Take up thy bed and walk;" and humanity, 
having obeyed, can never again adjust herself to the isola- 
tion of the past. The Church of Jesus Christ, having 
moved out from her fastnesses, will never return. And 
right here is the opportunity for the Puritanism of the 
fathers, baptized into the dreadth of the Gospel, to teach 
the Sovereignty of God, a stricter interpretation of the 
moral law, a more faithful observance of the Lord's Day 
and those germinal truths that lie at the heart of the 
Christian religion. And let no one imagine that he can 
get along without that which made the fathers great and 
good. For it is the duty of every generation to seek the 
good the past did not have and keep the good the past did 
have. To teach this truth, to interpret in the spirit of 
Christ the wonderous ways of providence in our modern 
world, to have all men see and act out the truth that 
through the worship of the living God man's nature is 
attuned to the Spiritual Order that out of it messages may 
come and blessings flow — such is a part of the work which 
this church will continue to do through coming generations. 

O ! branch of the Church of Christ in Little Compton ! 
For two hundred years thou hast proclaimed the gospel to 
the people of this town. Thou hast brought forth many no- 
ble sons and daughters. Thou hast taught them how to go, 
and they have leaned on thy arm. Thou hast baptized 
them, pointed them to God, married them and spoken words 
of comfort to them when dying. Thou hast been one of 
God's Good Samaritans going through all this region and 
binding up the wounds of poverty, unbelief and suffering. 
In thy day great things have been done in the earth. Wash- 
ington has come and gone. Franklin has chained the light- 
ning. Morse has invented the telegraph. This stalwart 
nation has risen and become a mighty power. The Union 



86 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

has been saved. The slave has been freed. The gospel has 
been preached to all the world. But thou hast not been a 
silent witness to these movements of Providence. Thou 
hast seen, thou hast thought, thou hast spoken. Thy min- 
isters and thy people have preached righteousness. Lo! 
they have seldom refrained their lips. And thou hast 
planted abroad the Larger Compton. Thou hast sent 
Bishop Brownell, Professor Shepard, Ray Palmer, and 
George W. Briggs to do the Lord's work in the wider world. 
And thus may it ever be! May it please God to give thee, 
O! mother of so many of the faithful, power to witness to 
His truth in coming time! May he permit thee to live to 
see this nation free from every curse that maketh an abom- 
ination and a lie and the whole earth filled with the knowl- 
edge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea ! May he give 
thee many worthy sons and daughters in the future, as in 
the past, who shall love the place of his sanctuary and es- 
tablish here his work ! For, as Lowell has written, 

* * * "I might as well 
Obey the meeting-house's bell, 

And listen while Old Hundred pours 
Forth through the Summer-opened doors, 

From old and young. I hear it yet, 
Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, 

While the gray minister, with face 
Radiant, let loose his noble bass. 

If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll 
"Waked all the echoes of the soul, 

And in it many a life found wings 
To soar away from sordid things. 

Church gone and singers too, the song 
Sings to me voiceless all night long, 

Till my soul beckons me afar, 
Glowing and trembling like a star."(i) 



(}) " Credidimus Jovem Regnare," by James Russell Lowell. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 37 



ADDRESS 

By Rev. Augustus M. Rice. 



It is difficult for me either to express or repress the emo- 
tions which arise as I once more stand in this place and re- 
call the facts that one of the original proprietors of this 
town of Little Compton and original members of this 
church, whose bones still lie beneath a brown-stone slab 
not a stone's throw from this pulpit, was my first New Eng- 
land ancestor; and also that, kneeling here, with the hands 
of the elders resting on my head, and the voice of the sainted 
Dr. Blodgett of Pawtucket sounding in my ear as he offered 
the ordaining prayer, I was set apart to the work of the 
gospel ministry. When I note the relation between these 
two facts so far apart in time and reflect upon the changes 
which have passed upon all things beneath the sun during 
the two hundred years between, I seem to see in this church 
a most impressive example of the survival of the fittest. 

I can note but three things which in this town are at all 
the same as they were two hundred years ago ; the ocean 
whose waves have never ceased to wash these shores through 
all the changeful years; the rocks which line these shores 
and stand as bulwarks to defend them against the encroach- 
ment of the waves, and this church of God built upon the 
foundation of the Apostles and Proiihets, Jesus Christ him- 
self being the chief corner-stone, in whom all the building, 
fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple of the 
Lord. All else has changed. The primeval forests as well 
as the original inhabitants have given place to many suc- 
cessors. Six generations of men have in turn occupied the 
earth since this church was founded. Governments, cus- 
toms, laws, habits and methods of living have suffered 
many transmutations since that early day. The men who 



38 BI-CENTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

founded this church saluted another flag than the one which 
now drapes these walls; they swore allegiance to the sov- 
ereign who ruled across the seas; they dwelt in homes far 
different externally and internally from ours. What would 
the founders of this town think of the homes which now 
adorn these shores and dot these green fields about us? 
The costumes they wore, the utensils of their home life both 
indoors and out are the rare curios we are invited to in- 
spect at the Hall this afternoon. What knowledge has this 
generation of pot-hooks and trammels? What boy or girl 
can tell you Avithout a dictionary what a skillet or a runlet 
was used for? 

Speaking of a runlet recalls a story told me by Gen. Na- 
thaniel Church which illustrates the change in customs 
from those elder days and may also have a bearing on one 
of the statements made in the historical discourse by the 
pastor. Gen. Church said : When I was a boy we had 
what was called the "minister's wood-hauling." Just be- 
fore cold weather in the fall there was a day appointed 
when the men went with their axes and oxen and carts out 
to the minister's wood lot and chopped down wood enough 
to last the minister a year, and hauled it to his house. It 
was great sport for us boys to go out with the men and see 
them cut down the trees. About the middle of the fore- 
noon the minister would come out on his horse with a run- 
let strapped to his saddle and say, "I thought I would come 
out and see how you are getting on and bring you a little 
something to refresh you." Then he would get off his 
horse, take down the runlet, and, handing it with a cup to 
some one, would say, "You can all take a drink, but don't 
drink too much." Then they all took a drink, but they 
never gave me any. After talking a short time, the minis- 
ter would ride away, saying, "I hope you will have a pleas- 
ant day and no accidents." The men would go back to 
work and presently they would get very lively. One would 
say to another: I stump you to cut down that tree before 
I do this one. And the axes would fly, and the way the 
trees would come down was a wonder to the small boys. I 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 39 

was several years older before I saw any connection be- 
tween that runlet and the way those trees came down. 

I tell this story as it was told to me nearly thirty years 
ago, with no disposition to controvert the statement quoted 
by the historian to the effect that the Rev. Mase Shepard 
never used and never gave to others any intoxicating drink. 
General Church did not say what that runlet contained. 
He was not permitted to know. It might have been water 
from the spring, or some other liquid. Each one can draw 
his own conclusions. It is, however, quite plain that the 
Rev. Mr. Shepard knew how to use woodhauling day to the 
best advantage for his own woodpile. He \nsiy very well, 
for all that, have been an active participant in the temper- 
ance reforms of a hundred years ago. The church has sur- 
vived and been found worthy to survive the passing of many 
customs prevalent in public and social life because it has 
been the most potent instrument in their removal. 

This church has survived from generation to generation 
because of the beneficent work it has done for each one of 
them successively. When churches fail to do that, they, 
like other things, pass away. This church has always ex- 
erted a beneficial influence on the social life of the town. 
Whatever may be true of city churches, the country church 
keeps all classes of people in helpful touch with one an- 
other. At the church they meet and greet one another 
every week, inquire after the welfare of all, interchange bits 
of innocent neighborhood gossip, and go home with a 
stronger feeling that they are members one of another. Be- 
ginning as children in the Sunday School the young people 
here became acquainted ; in the church choir and the church 
social they met under circumstances which tended to pro- 
mote mutual resfject and esteem, and, in many cases, unions 
which resulted in lifelong happiness to all concerned, in 
pure and pious homes without which no community can es- 
cape degeneracy. 

This church has been a place where the rich and poor for 
six generations have met together to worship that God who 
is the Maker of them all. For that reason alone it deserves 
to survive. It has been the conservator of the Christian 



40 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Sabbath — a day set apart from worldly pursuits and pleas- 
ures, for rest and the worship of God. Without such a 
Sabbath any community, however intelligent, will lapse 
into barbarism gross or refined. This church has been the 
custodian and defender of a Holy Bible which is the Word 
of the living God whose truths alone can make man free, 
whose precepts alone can make him godlike. By the pub- 
lic reading, teaching and proclaiming of that Word this 
church has brought it into vital and saving contact with the 
minds and hearts and lives of the people of this town ; for 
that purpose it was founded by the fathers, and for doing 
that work it has no substitute. This church has stood for 
spiritual realities, has kept alive in this community faith 
in an invisible God and an unseen world. Always and 
everywhere among men the strong drift has been toward 
materialism. Force and phenomena are what science and 
philosophy are principally occupied with. Men learned in 
such matters find it much easier either to ignore or deny 
the existence of aught else thatn to demonstrate or even ad- 
mit it. 

" The stars, they tell us, blindly run, 
A. web is woven across the sky. 
From out waste places comes a cry 
And murmurs from a dying sun." 

This church, however, stands for just the opposite of all 
such teachings and tendencies. For two hundred years it 
has here taught that the stars do not blindly run; but that 
the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork. There is no web woven across the 
sky; but we all are dwelling under an open Heaven with 
whose great Euler we may have loving and unbroken fel- 
lowship, and the angels of God are continually ascending 
and descending on missions of love and mercy to the chil- 
dren of men. 

The cries of the destroyer and the destroyed are not the 
only voices heard from out waste places. For God's ten- 
der mercies are over all his works; not a sparrow falleth 
without our Father: he opens his hand and supplies the 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 41 

needs of every living thing, giving to all their meat in due 
season. For every cry of pain heard among his creatures 
there are a thousand notes of gladness. And although in 
this age there is pain and travail for all creatures, we live 
in hope of a better day, when the sun, instead of being a dy- 
ing orb, shall shine with a splendor sevenfold his present 
brightness; for the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the 
whole earth as the waters cover the sea, when sin and 
death shall disappear and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
away. 

Because this church has kept men in this pulpit who 
preached and enforced these things, and because in these 
pews there have never been lacking men and women who 
lived and died in the belief and hope of them, this church 
has been found worthy to survive the changes of six gene- 
rations. God grant that in the generations to come it may 
still have no lack of the same kind of preaching and believ- 
ing: for thereby and thereby only will it demonstrate to 
the great Head of the Church and to all men its fitness to 
still survive. 



42 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

ADDRESS 

By Rev. William D. Hakt. 



In the ten minutes for reminiscences requested of me, I 
wish first of all to thank you for your cordial invitation to 
me and for your generous hospitality. I rejoice that the 
church is still bringing forth fruit in old age (Ps. 92:14) 
and is displaying the full vigor of youth. 

First impressions are most vivid. I well remember some 
of my first experiences in Little Compton. I remember the 
first Compton man whom I met: the genial, well-informed 
Henry M. Tompkins, that delightful conversationalist. He 
met me with a carriage at Tiverton station, near the close 
of a Saturday in June, 1875. I remember the fog that en- 
veloped us as we came down Windmill Hill, and the pitch 
darkness before we reached Deacon Simmons' roadgate. I 
remember thinking what a great dooryard Deacon Simmons 
must have; it took so long to reach the house from the 
street. The cordial welcome from the Deacon's family and 
the refreshing repast are vivid memories ; but especially the 
being awakened at dawn by the gabbling geese. I had 
come from a quiet home in New Hampshire where such ex- 
periences were not common. Then the Sabbath came on, 
and the ride to church in the family carriage. The audi- 
ence in this house were greatly pleased with the sermon 
that Sunday morning, and well they might be, for it was 
preached by the Rev. Dr. Ray Palmer. I considered that 
easy candidating. Dr. Palmer did the preaching and I got 
the call. There has always been a tender spot in my heart 
for Dr. Palmer. Indeed he was very kind to me, because, 
as I suppose, of his love for this church. Here he came 
every summer to visit his sister, and the people always ex- 
pected a sermon, and were not disappointed. Here he came 
at our 175th anniversary, and gave us that charming 




Rev. William D. Hart 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 43 

resume of sixty-five years. The Rev. Dr. George Ware 
Briggs, another native of Little Compton, was also with us 
at that time, with helpful words right from his gi'eat warm 
heart. 

The mention of that event calls up the fact that of those 
who participated in the exercises, or composed the commit- 
tee on publication, ''I, even I only, am left." Some of you 
remember there were also present former pastors : Gold- 
smith, Beach, and Walker; also Rev. W. H. Sturtevant, of 
Tiverton; Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Taylor, of Providence, and 
Deacon James H. Bailey, of Danielsonville, Conn. We had 
letters too from Prof. Charles U. Shepard and his sister, 
Mrs. Boltwood, and from Rev. J. P. Lane, of Bristol. All 
of these have joined the great majority. Indeed, of the 133 
members of the church in 1875, only about thirty can an- 
swer the earthly roll-call now. Precious memories throng 
our minds as we think on these names. It would be a pa- 
thetic pleasure to dwell on them, did time permit. They 
were all very kind to me and my family, and we all look 
back to the days spent here as among our happiest. This 
was my first pastorate, and you are the people of my first 
love. 

My relation with the officers of the church was always 
very pleasant. The deacons formed an efficient triumvirate. 
They differed widely in their individual characteristics, but 
worked together harmoniously and together made an ideal 
composite deacon. Deacon Richmond, under a somewhat 
puritanical exterior, carried a warm heart. This was 
shown in his loving devotion to the partner of his life. And 
what a sweet, beautiful woman she was! Deacon Rich- 
mond attended faithfully to the business end of the church, 
while he did not neglect its spiritual interests. He was 
fervent in prayer, and the church was the object of his love. 
Deacon Simmons was a man whom everybody loved. This 
I always thought was because he lived so near the Master. 
He used to say that after a hard day's work nothing rested 
him like the prayer-meeting. If Deacon Church were not 
here, I would like to tell how I loved him, and how much 



44 BI-CENTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

he was always doing for the church and for his pastor. I 
am so thankful that he still lives to encourage and uphold 
the church by his presence and his prayers. 

In the last years of my pastorate, two more good men 
w^ere chosen to the diaconate, and in Deacons Howard and 
Bailey are found the qualifications necessary to that oflSce 
as stated by the Apostle Paul. The treasurer of the society 
was an important oflScial as concerned myself, for through 
him I received my daily bread. Preston B. Richmond per- 
formed this work faithfully until his lamented death, after 
which his brother William assumed the duties of that office. 
The clerk of the church, during all my pastorate and for a 
much longer period, was Albert H. Simmons, one of the 
most spiritually minded men of my acquaintance. He was 
a great heljj to me. He was one of whom I think we may 
reverently say, "He was made perfect through suffering." 

I would like, if I could, thus to go through the whole 
congregation and speak of individuals, but it would make 
my story too long. 

Among the old ladies, whom it was my duty and pleasure 
to visit were Mrs. Angeline Grinnell, Mrs. Valentine Sim- 
mons, Mrs. Abigail Bailey, Mrs. Mercy Borden and Mrs. 
Prudence Wilbor. All these were widows, and they de- 
lighted in prayer, the last one named being, perhaps, the 
most vigorous of them all. It is related that once a new 
minister was in the pulpit, who was more gifted in sound 
than in sense, and after a long, wordy discourse, he closed 
with a flourish of trumpets ending in "Amen and Amen," 
whereupon "Aunt Prudy," sitting right down there near 
the front, involuntarily exclaimed, "And I say Amen, too." 

Among the most influential persons in the church in my 
day was Mrs. Arethusa Briggs, whose devotion to Christ 
and self-denying service in His name have been a power for 
good to this day, and earned for her in a special degree the 
praise, "She hath done what she could." 

There were two other women who, though very different 
in their experiences, are associated in my mind as workers 
together in every good cause. These were Mrs. Abel Tomp- 
kins, and Miss Maria Brownell. It is a beautiful picture 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 45 

that comes before me, as I see these two ladies, with a large 
basket of presents and a list of children's names, at our 
Christmas tree, to make sure that no child should be over- 
looked in the distribution of gifts. 

The Ladies' Sociable was as important a factor in the 
well-being of the church a generation ago as it is now. The 
mention of that name brings to mind a most efficient circle 
of women, many of whom are still active in the good work. 
Inseparably connected with it are also the names of Miss 
Maria Brownell, Mrs. Arethusa Briggs, Mrs. Oliver Brown- 
ell, Mrs. Deacon Simmons and Mrs. Hannah Grinnell. 
Theirs is a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away. 

In my mind are cherished memories of the Young Peo- 
jjle's Society of Christian Endeavor, which was an invalu- 
able aid to the work of the church. In connection with its 
organization, we remember with gratitude the services of 
one who assisted us in getting tlie society under way, and 
who by his enthusiasm gave an impetus to the work which 
insured its success. It seemed a great loss to the cause of 
Christ and the church when, in his early manhood, there 
went out the life of Joseph R. Alden. 

I am glad you celebrate this day. I congratulate you on 
your present action, living spiritual condition, and assure 
you that you are held in daily loving remembrance by me 
at the throne of grace. 



46 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

ADDRESS 

By Rev. Thomas F. Norris. 



After the eloquent words that have been spoken there is 
little that I can say. It is, however, with a feeling of pride 
that I find my name associated with the long list of illustri- 
ous men who have occupied this pulpit. 

The chain which binds this church with the past is com- 
posed of two hundred links. Each link represents a year's 
history. I had an exceedingly modest part in welding two 
of those links. 

I have always thought that my identification with this 
church was very much more beneficial to myself than to the 
people. The circumstances which led me here and the ex- 
I eriences which I passed through while here are among the 
most pleasant of my life. I had been serving a church in 
one of the busy, bustling cities of the west. The rumbling 
of the immense trains of three transcontinental railways 
could be heard from the parsonage night and day. There 
was no cessation of activity. On all sides were evidences 
of the strenuous life. 

The contrast between such a field of labor and this is as 
great as can be imagined. I was charmed with the little 
town. Everything I saw had an attraction : its ocean view, 
its quiet farms, the stately church, the attentive congrega- 
tion, the unstinted generosity of the people. At no place 
that I had been did I receive so warm a welcome, and in 
all there pervaded a spirit of peace and restfulness. My 
stay with this people was a period of rest and recuperation 
that I much needed. 

Another thing which stood out in marked contrast with 
my western work was the home life which I observed. 
There, everybody seemed to be striving for a home, They 
were brave men and women who, lured on by the hope of 
bettering themselves, had left their old life in the east and 
were pressing toward the fertile plains of the west. It was 
a gallant struggle in which some succeeded and for which 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 47 

some were still struggling. Most of the homes were in the 
process of making. Here, there was an entire absence of 
such conditions. These homes were established, and as I 
entered them I was impressed with their completeness and 
order. The people were happy and contented. I had never 
seen such before, and my conclusion was that here was an 
ideal New England town, with ideal homes and ideal peo- 
ple, and that to live with such was a privilege and joy. 

There was one thing, however, that occasioned perplex- 
ity. I noticed that the young people when they reached a 
certain age, as a general thing, left the town to settle in 
some other part of the state or country. In the building 
up of a church, the pastor invariably looks to the young. 
Without them the constituency of a church is very much 
narrowed. And I asked the question. If our young people 
leave us in this manner, how am I to build up this church? 
As I studied the problem, certain facts were disclosed that 
proved that even in this exodus of the young men and young 
women of the church there were certain compensations. 

A tourist in Maine on meeting a native of one of the 
sparsely settled sections asked him this question: "What 
do you do here?" ''We make men," he replied. And this 
was true; for all over the land may be found men of force 
and genius who were born and brought up in the state of 
Maine. And the same is true of Little Compton and this 
church. It makes men, and sends them out through New 
England and other states. And among those who have 
gone may be found many who have reached success in law 
and literature and business. Wherever they have gone they 
have made their mark; and I contented myself with the 
thought that this church was doing a great and noble work 
if it could prepare the boys and the girls for the life that 
was before them, so that, when they went out from their 
homes, they would take the strength and beauty of their 
early training and impress them on the community in which 
they were to live. 

I esteem it a privilege and pleasure to be with you to-day. 
I congratulate you on the happy auspices of this occasion. 
May the blessing of God attend your future efforts. 



48 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 



ADDRESS 

By Rev. James H. Lyon. 



I HAVE been asked to bring the congratulations of the 
Congregational churches of Rhode Island to this people. 
The lot fell on me, not because I could do it an}^ better than 
my brethren, but because I am a kind of cosmopolitan 
bishop of our apostolic Congregational order in the state- 
heading the list of active pastors with longest service in 
one church, a little over thirty-seven years. 

Besides this, I think I hold precedence over all other min- 
isters nov^' living, owing to the generally unknown fact that 
my mother — Lucy Little Davis, daughter of Major John 
Davis — was born and lived, I know not how long, in Lit- 
tle Compton. About the first place I heard of when I was 
a small boy was Little Compton. It was the whole of 
Rhode Island to me then. It has always been a sacred place 
to me because my mother was born here. 

So, in a way, I am one of you to-day — one of your chil- 
dren come back on this happy occasion to bring you my 
own and others' sincere congratulations. 

They say you are 200 years old! You do not show it in 
your looks. You appear as young and vigorous as a church 
that has only reached "sweet sixteen," or its majority. I 
congratulate you on being so old and at the same time so 
young. I'ou must have grown old very gracefully — of 
course you have. Without the grace of God that is in you, 
that entered at the beginning, and has flowed on, sweet and 
strong, through all the years, you would have withered and 
died long ago. Y^ou have kept fat and flourishing for two 
centuries, proving the presence and power of the God of all 
grace, who called you unto his eternal glory in Christ. 

I congratulate you, in the name of all the churches, that 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 49 

you are not dying or going to die. You have disproved the 
saying that "the good die young." I expect to meet and 
greet you in the New Jerusalem ; and that is yet a long way 
off— farther than another 200 years probably. Our sym- 
pathetic joy mingles with your gladness to-day, at the 
thought that after these festivities are over, even after all 
of us who are here to-day have vanished into the unseen, 
this church will remain. Other hands and hearts will con- 
tinue its life and work, as you are doing in your turn. 

A church, like a man, needs to have a good supply of com- 
mon sense. It needs to be resourceful and able to manage 
its affairs with discretion. It should know how to make 
the best of any given situation. I think the last time I 
was here you showed this common sense ability. You had 
called a council to dismiss your ministei- — to let him go in 
good Congregational order and with proper endorsement. 
It proved to be a very stormy day. Only a minority of the 
churches invited came. There were only two ministers 
present — possibly three. But the two I remember, one 
a black man and the other white, divided the offices between 
them, and went on with the work just as though there were 
a full quorum. You said that was all right. So said we 
all of us. The retiring minister went away with a good 
recommendation. I think he is here to-day to prove that 
everything went on well. It is related of Dr. Alexander, 
who, a long time ago, taught theology at Princeton, that he 
said to his students one day, "Young gentlemen, if you are 
deficient in learning you can get more; if you lack piety, 
you can all grow in grace; but if you have no common sense, 
the Lord have mercy upon you ! " 

There is no cloud or gloom of that kind overhanging 
you. Indeed, a Congregational church, organized, as all 
such churches are, on the principle of Christian and apos- 
tolic common sense, may reasonably expect to have cen- 
turies of prosperity and progress as you have enjoyed. 

We congratulate you also on the worthy list of ministers 
you have had, including the modest and very excellent man 
who is now your pastor. They have been bargains, though 
you did not select them from the bargain-counter. A neigh- 



50 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

bor of ours used to say to one of our boys who was quite a 
worker: "Don't work too hard, Charley; good boys are 
scarce." We are sometimes told that good ministers are 
scarce. I do not think so. You have always had enough, 
and good ones, too. The church that has a spiritual and 
faithful ministry is to be congratulated. 

And good deacons, too — they are a treasure — like a good 
wife. It is reported that the Little Compton church has 
been fortunate in its deacons — and in the wives of its mem- 
bers, too. Happy is the people that are in such a case. 
They can never be in the sad condition of that church of 
which a certain man was a member. Some one asked him 
whether there were any Christians in his church. He re- 
plied that he knew of only two — himself and his wife; but 
he was not quite sure about his wife. I suspect he was 
like that complaining person who, when asked, "How are 
you to-day?" replied, "I feel very well; but I always feel 
badly when I feel well because I know I am going to feel 
worse." 

You have kept the faith, too; and, of course, the faith has 
kept you. The faith that is sourced and centered in Christ, 
sunned and strengthened by his surpassing love, purified 
and sweetened by his Spirit, made obedient and serviceable 
for his sake — this faith you have kept these 200 years. We 
congratulate you on this account. By it you have lived 
and helped many to reign in life. It is a fine record for all 
everywhere who have made it — -the example left by our Mas- 
ter and followed by Paul, and which he could look back 
upon so joyfully at the finish of his course. It is an 
achievement worthy of the God who inspires it, and of the 
people who are steadfastly responsive to the vision of life 
he causes to shine before us, and sensitive to the impulse 
from Him that makes it sure. 

We congratulate you on your love for the church. That 
is Christ-like. And your love for its surroundings — these 
lovely fields, this large room in which God has set your feet 
and where you have "abundant space to live his life and 
grow his growth;" with the ocean, too, staying itself upon 
jour shore, and sending in upon you the benediction which 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 51 

we inland court and come to you to share; and homes where 
love lightens labor, and peace abounds, and human nerves 
have rest from city noise and strain. I will wfirrant that 
jou feel the honest satisfaction felt by an Irishman in his 
native Emerald Isle. Three men were in each other's com- 
pany one day — an Englishman, and a Scotchman, and an 
Irishman. Said the Englishman to the Scotchman, "If you 
were not a Scotchman, what would you be?" He replied, 
^*If I were not a Scotchman, I Avould be an Englishman." 
Then the Scotchman returned the question to the English- 
man, *'If you were not an Englishman, what would you be?" 
''If I were not an Englishman," he answered, "I would be 
a Scotchman." Then they both turned to the Irishman. 
"If you were not an Irishman, what would you be?" To 
which, with true fervor, he responded, "If I were not an 
Irishman, I would be ashamed!" 

Quite likely your sentiments respecting Little Compton 
are illustrated by the Irish end of that story. If so, I come 
not here to chide you. I brought no complaints; neither 
have I discovered ground for any since I came. Congrat- 
ulations — sincere, earnest, hearty — from all the churches. 
We reverently salute you enthroned on your two centuries 
of church life. We look up to you with the respect due to 
your years. A few of our churches were already bej^ond 
their A B C's, or well on in life, when you were born. Bar- 
rington was forty years old. Bristol, seventeen. The New- 
man Church in East Providence was sixty-one years your 
senior. Kingston was ahead of 3011 by nine years. But 
these ancient members of our Congregational household are 
no less warmhearted than the rest. A few summers, more 
or less, make, no difference — when we get up to the second 
or third century. Our youngest, not one year old yet, wants 
to be remembered to you just like the others. Its name is 
Hope — Hope Church, of East Providence. That is Provi- 
dence to the east, toward the rising sun. We are all on 
that side of the meridian — all churches of Divine Provi- 
dence, and facing the ever ascending Light of the world. 



52 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

We all share in the rich inheritance of hope, for which, with 
yon, we render thanks to Him whose 

" Glory is His children's good, 
Whose joy Ilis tender Fatherhood." 

And though 

" We know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies," 

we can hope to the end for the grace that shall be brought 
to us in the increasing revelation and glory of Jesus Christ. 
His we all are, and Him we serve — our common Lord, in 
whose name we congratulate you to-day, and bid you God- 
speed. Go on in faith that never yields to fear, in hope 
that lightens toil with cheerful song, in love that never 
fails though tongues shall cease and knowledge be done 
away. Go on where the Master leads, his banner over you, 
his cause your constant aim. Keceive his "good cheer," and 
ours in his name, for all the coming years. Remember his 
inspiring word, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." Thank God and take courage, as well 
you may, with all who love our Lord — loyally partaking 
with every company of God's sacramental host even in the 
"tribulation," if need be, but surely in the "kingdom and 
patience which are in Jesus." For your "calling" to all 
this — to the things that are highest, richest, most endur- 
ing — for your spiritual apprehension of God and his glory 
on earth; for your earnest aspiration to keep your light 
here well trimmed and bright; for your increasing and un- 
ceasing fruitfulness, made sure by faithful co-operation 
with God, accept the fervent congratulations of all the 
brethren in the Lord. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 53 



ADDRESS 

By Eev. Thomas R. Slicer, D. D. 



The presence of a Christian church in any community 
shows that there is in that community a group of people 
who believe that the highest function of the human soul is 
worship, and that they are resolved to maintain a cen- 
ter in which this highest function shall be exercised — ac- 
centuated and raised in power by this association of a com- 
mon purpose with its exercise. So far from the church be- 
ing '"A survival of the Ages of Faith," it is in the best sense 
a, barrier set against an age of despair; it is not simply a 
monument of the past, but in the proportion in Avhich it 
serves its divine purpose, it is a challenge to the future. 
For a free church in which the mind claims the liberty of 
prophesying is apt to be in the advance movement of the 
mental processes of any sane community. The church was 
never more necessary than to-day. In the midst of this 
hurry of modern life it is a center of quiet in the cyclone's 
heart ; men fail of intellectual power and religious peace by 
over-activity, and the neglect of times of meditation — 
"Come in, and rest, and pray !" is the church's invitation to 
a world smitten with the superstition of being always busy 
at the expense of mental and spiritual power. Our fever- 
ish activities are calmed and divine energy enters our spent 
lives. 

Moreover, no man properly estimates his support of the 
church who thinks his contribution is a gift which his gen- 
erosity has bestowed; it is, instead, a fee that he has paid 
for his own religious education and the education of his 
family. If this is not what he consciously receives for 
what he pays, it may be that he has not paid enough to get 
what costs him more in his school-bills and his manifold 



54 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

ways of entertainment and instruction. Many a man has 
grown weary of the church which he has insisted should be 
kept to a cheap level of reluctant support. You cannot do 
a wholesale business in a retail plant. The man who is nig- 
gardly with the church is being really mean to himself, for 
it exists for him and his household. These are the men who 
will fatigue serious people by talk about conducting the 
church on business principles and say, "I pay, whether I go 
or not!" Is this business? The first principle in business 
is to he at the place of husiness, and until the store or office 
can be turned over to the janitor and the clerks, it can 
never come to be "good business" to turn over the church to 
the sexton and the minister. And so far as the minister is 
concerned, his contract "to be on hand" is no more binding 
than that of the pew-holder or church supporters. Con- 
tracts imph' mutual obligation. You cannot make a fire 
\^ith one log! 

It is my deliberate judgment after years of careful obser- 
vation in the ministry that the man who systematical!}^ neg- 
lects, without good cause preventing, the services of religion 
is apt to lose a part of that development of his whole nature 
for which these services supply a means supplied by noth- 
ing else. The church and its services have remained 
through centuries because they corresponded to the needs of 
human nature. These needs remain. The ripest natures 
are those who use the means which humanity has found 
efficient to enrich, mellow and strengthen. If they should 
ever grow so strong as "not to need the church," then the 
church will need them, for the sake of those who still need 
the church. If we are strong we have to prove it, not by 
idleness, but by service ; if we are wise, there are many still 
to be taught; if we are good, the proof will be, as long ago 
given by him who went about doing good, and who yet went 
into the humble "Synagogue at Nazareth on the Sabbath 
day as his custom was." His religion has been well defined 
"As living the Eternal Life in the midst of time by the 
strength and under the eve of God." 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 55 

ADDRESS 

By Mb. Horace G. Shaw. 



On this interesting occasion it affords me very great 
pleasure to be present and to offer a few words as represent- 
ing two of the old families of Little Compton. The two, 
however, have become many; and so I may be pardoned if 
I make personal allusions. 

Here for generations was the home of my ancestry. Here 
I passed my childhood and school days. To this town I 
have turned for the short vacation periods that I have been 
permitted to enjoy since I left to engage in the mercantile 
business nearly fifty years ago. 

The population of this town in the first quarter of the 
19th century was larger than at the present, they tell me; 
and in the same breath I am informed that there are but 
few changes. And I concluded the latter statement true as 
I visited my old haunt along the shore that is unchanged at 
the eastern end of the town. But on returning to the old 
homestead, to reply to a telephone call, I said, My grand- 
father lived seventy-five years on this farm. So did four 
great grandfathers. And they had no telephone; and I 
said, The town Jias changed — certainly in its customs. 

To turn to this old and time-honored church, permit me 
to draw a picture of the past: Parson Beane enters the 
pulpit, then at the other end of the audience room. Ezra 
Coe, his head whitened with the snows of many winters, is 
in the front pew. George Cook Bailey occupies a seat near. 
Capt. Benjamin Seabury and Gen. Nathaniel Church enter 
their pews opposite. John Seabury is on the opposite side 
of the house; also the venerable pedagogue who on week- 
days tried to instill into our minds the mysteries of Brown's 
grammar. Deacons Wilbor and Richmond now enter. It 
was here that my mother during a period of grace in 1850 



56 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CBLBBEATION OF THE UNITED 

confessed faith in Christ and chose that better part. 
Others could be mentioned, who long ago joined the great 
majority, and still others of a younger generation with 
many of whom the steps begin to falter and the shadows are 
lengthening. 

I have heard from those who preceded me of the men 
who have gone out from this town; and I am glad that I 
also can claim Little Compton as the place of my birth. 
And if I can look back two hundred years and see my grand- 
father, by the seventh generation, as the first recorded mem- 
ber of this church, it mattereth less, as perhaps forty now 
before me are in about the same way related. And were 
my cousins just now to withdraw from this room, a small 
audience would be left. 

I thank your committee and the members of this congre- 
gation for remembering me in far off New Jersey, and for 
giving me a place among such honorable and reverend gen- 
tlemen, as well as for the opportunity to be among my rel- 
atives and friends on this important occasion. 

This church has had a grand history. May the coming 
years be the brightest and best; and in the great work of 
the church I bid you God-speed. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 57 



ABSTRACT OF SERMON 

By Rev. Albekt H. Plumb, D. D. 



'■'■Say not thoii^ What is the cause that the former days were better than 
these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.'" Ecclesiastes 
VII. 10. 

It would appear that the unwisdom of this inquiry lies in 
its groundless assumption that the former days were bet- 
ter than these, when a si)irit of faith in God's plan and 
promise should preclude all such assumptions. 

If we would be "men who have understanding of the 
times to know what Israel ought to do," we must cherish a 
grateful recognition of the onworking of God's plan and 
the fulfilment of his promise in the past. ''In all thy ways 
acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths." 

Historical commemorations greatly aid us in cultivating 
a spirit of grateful confidence in the development of God's 
plan according to his promise. For these commemorations 
help us to a due appreciation of the value of the modest vir- 
tues of ordinary life. While we acknowledge our indebted- 
ness to great leaders and the deeds wrought in some great 
€risis and in some conspicuous field, yet it is the virtues of 
the common people of the rank and file in the Christian 
Church, the character of our American homes, as generally 
found in our communities at large, on which the nature of 
our civilization and the prosperity of the nation depend. 

There are certain manifest features of modern life which 
very clearly indicate the merciful character of the divii?a 
purpose in ordering the progress of the race. 

1. There is the general concession in behalf of almost all 
systems of philosophy or schemes of reform that, in order 
to command popular approval, they must conform to the 



68 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

true spirit and teaching of Christ. Contrast this with the 
attitude of the ancient Pagan culture as manifest in the 
treatment of Paul on Mars' hill. ''Then certain philoso- 
phers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics, encountered him. 
And some said, What will this babbler say?" 

2. There is the growing and intense conviction of the 
great mass of practical Christian men that in God's revealed 
will in the Gospel of redemption by His Son we have the 
only and absolutely indispensable cure for the appalling 
evils of our time, the only remedy for the inveterate sinful- 
ness of the human heart. The widespread corruption in 
financial and political life, the shameful moral indifference 
and immoralities of many of the luxurious classes, the deg- 
radation and violence of the less favored classes, the cruel- 
ties and oppressions of organized labor and capital, class 
animosities and industrial warfare, together with the utter 
loss of faith in the Bible on the part of many, by reason of 
the destructive higher criticism, temporarily rife, and the 
consequent neglect of religious worship furnish alarming 
evidence of the futility of all endeavors fQr human progress 
which are not dependent on the supernatural presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit taking the things of Christ and 
showing them unto men. "For this purpose was the Son of 
God manifested that he might destroy the works of the 
devil." The continual outpouring of gifts of toil and of 
money, the heroic sacrifices and consecrated lives of innum- 
erable Christian disciples attest the truth of Christ's words, 
"Ye are the light of the world" and "ye are the salt of the 
earth." If there was ever a futile endeavor, it is the effort 
to make earnest spiritual men believe that the Book which 
has wrought such wonderful changes and built up such no- 
ble characters is a mere human composition, an untrust- 
worthy mixture of fiction and fraud. With a more intense 
conviction than ever, men are holding to the need and the 
fact of an inspired revelation, "a piece of information given 
b,7 God to man for the salvation of the race." 

3. There is a comprehension growing more and more 
dear that the world owes to the distinctively evangelical 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 59 

truths and facts of the Gospel the mightiest motives for 
transforming human character, elevating the condition of 
society and fitting man for the heavenly world. The fact 
that he who made man himself became man and tasted 
death for every man more exalts the idea of the worth of 
the individual man and the sacredness of his rights than 
any other fact in the history of the universe. And the par- 
allel revealed truth that without the shedding of blood there 
is no remission of sin and that Christ gave Himself a ran- 
som for us more exalts the inviolability of law and the 
majesty of government than any other truth revealed to 
man. In the exaltation of these two evangelical facts and 
principles lies the secret of the wonderful advance in the 
protection of human rights and the establishment of free 
and popular government. 

4. When we consider the peculiar type of American civ- 
ilization and its conspicuous and potent exhibition of the 
democracy of Christianity before the nations of the world, 
we are led to look with amazement upon the providential 
development and vast increase of the resources of our na- 
tion as a world-power. 

5. The increased dignity of man's position in nature, his 
deeper insight into its mysteries, and his greater control of 
its powers vastly enlarge the scope of his spiritual influence 
And give cheering promise of his coming triumphs in the 
realm of religious thought and character. There is a be- 
neficent trend in the amazing progress of invention and dis- 
covery. These inventions and discoveries are the scaffold- 
ing around the spiritual temple which God is building and 
are valuable chiefly for their ministry in that higher realm 
where spiritual character and the welfare of the soul are 
the great objects of the divine care. 

6. There is a more general recognition of the fact that 
economic law and moral law are from the same hand. This 
is God's world, and not Satan's. True success can only 
come by conformity to God's will. Rapacity is never sa- 
gacity. There is a growing predominance of Christian 
principles and Christian men in the management of affairs. 
There is no use in fighting against nature. "He that sin- 



^0 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

neth against me wrongeth his own soul." "Godliness is prof- 
itable for the life that now is and for that which is to 
€0ine." There is an arousing of the public conscience in be- 
half of righteousness in all social relations and industrial 
affairs. There is a demand for publicity in the complicated 
problems of modern life. Let in the light. Find out what 
is fair and then demand what is fair. High authorities in 
finance say that men do not want to do and do not dare to 
<lo the acts of injustice that were common not long ago. 

In view of these and other manifest tokens of God's pres- 
ence with his people, we may confidently anticipate the 
promised hour when the voices in heaven shall be heard 
saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the King- 
dom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for 
ever and ever. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 61 

HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 

THE TOWN OF LITTLE COMPTON. 
By Roswell B. Burchard. 



As we stand and look from the elevatioii which is crowned 
by this venerable place of worship and view the surround- 
ing country, we should be insensible to the best blessings of 
bounteous Nature if we were not joyous that our lines had 
fallen in a place so pleasant. The eminence of Windmill 
Hill to the north, the encircling woodland to the east, old 
Ocean's band of blue to the south and the broad Sakonnet 
to the west are the confines of a truly delectable country. 
One is prone under this influence to enter this sanctuary, 
open his hymn-book and sing with all his heart and all his 
lungs, as the Fathers did when this old church was new : 

" My willing soul wf)uld stay 
In such a frame as this." 

Standing, too, upon the altitude of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury, and turning where "the centuries behind us like a 
fruitful land repose," we should be ungrateful for the best 
blessings of Divine Providence if we failed to-day to do 
homage to those generations of men, who, through toil and 
prayer and blood, drove the furrow of civilization that we 
might enjoy its fruitage. 

The motive of tlie hour is retrospection. The older ])eo- 
ple, contemplating the farms, the homesteads, and the 
friendships of their youth, observe regretfully the remorse- 
less work of time, the relentlessness of change. During 
my short residence here how many friendships have been 
made and lost, how many places have been made irremedi- 
ably vacant! Charles Edwin Wilbour, Benjamin F. Wil- 

NOTE. At the request of the Committee all that wa- prep.tieu i-r aus addieas is 
herein published, though portions were omitted in the delivery— Ed. 



•62 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

bour, George A. Gray, Isaac C. Wilbour, Warren Kempton, 
Follen Bebee, Frederick R. Brownell, George S. Burleigh, — 
what amiable associations are summoned at the mention of 
these names! 

There are here but three things which are immutable : the 
sea and its bulwark of rocks, the sky with its everlasting 
glory of stars, and the tabernacle of the changeless God 
which is set up in the hearts of a Christian people. The 
primeval forests are gone. Of the aboriginal race not a ves- 
tige remains save an occasional relic picked up like a 
strange sea-shell on Time's shore. Canonicus, Metacomet, 
Wamsutta, Awashonks, Weetamoe, — I am afraid we know 
better as the names of mills and merchandise, yachts and 
steamboats than as personages who have influenced our own 
lives. 

Generation after generation of people as worthy, as gen- 
erous, as clever as ourselves, — our immediate ancestors, 
have passed away and have left scarcely any tangible sou- 
venirs of their belongings or any written memorials of their 
lives. The probate records contain long inventories of 
household treasures, — silver, pictures, swords, watches, 
buckles, canes, family bibles, — Where are they? That is 
the question vainly asked by our industrious Committee on 
the Historical Exhibit. How sacredly we treasure their 
every written word, no matter how commonplace or homely. 
The lesson is : Go home and make up your family record 
and write your biographies for the delectation of your pos- 
terity. Or, if reticence restrains, then write something 
about your fathers and grandfathers. Among my most val- 
ued possessions is a long letter written to the Rev. Ezra 
Stiles of Newport ^ by the grandson of Col. Benjamin 
Church, in which he gives a personal description of hip 
grandfather and an account of his fatal fall from his horse. 

In view of this universal modesty, or lack of foresight, 
shown in the scanty nature of family records, it is fortunate 
the early American colonists introduced the practice of re- 



(') Pastor 2d church, Newport, 1756-1777 ; President Yale College, 1778-1795; Editor 
■of Benjamin Church's King Philip's War. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 63 

cording all conveyances of laud, — ^a system not previously 
in vogue in the old country. 

The fruitage of this antique seed one may find to-day in 
the dingy folios enshrined within the iron doors of the town 
hall safe. To the local antiquarian this is a treasury like 
that of Atreus. Here are copies of the deeds of Awashonks 
and her tribesmen to the first proprietors; the original rec- 
ords of these proprietors, and a complete registry of deeds 
quaintly entitled, "Land Evidence Books." There is a 
genealogical record of families covering certain periods, 
with registers of births, marriages and deaths, and finally 
the records of all the town meetings, from the earliest times 
to the present day.^ There is also an ancient map of the town 
as it was laid out in the latter part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. A map, which, to my mind, is equally valuable 
though not so ancient, is one owned by Mr. P. H. Wilbour, 
that was made by Otis Wilbor about 1842. In this map 
the names of the original landholders are substituted for 
the names of the later ones which are entered on the older 
map. These maps, taken together, show first, those to 
whom the original lots fell at the first drawing, and second, 
those who really settled on the land or OAvned it after con- 
siderable selling and exchanging had taken place. 

I shall not attempt a connected historical sketch of this 
town. That has been carefully prepared by Mr. H. W. 
Blake in the history of Newport County, to which you all 
have access.'^ I shall simply recall certain scenes, incidents 
and persons, each typical, I think, of their several epochs. 

ORIGIN. 

You are aware that we were not a part of Roger Wil- 
liams's colony, — not a part of Rhode Island at all, but of 



(') Records of town meetings and vital records before 1747 are still in possession 
of the town, but the " land-evidence " and probate records before that date, in ac- 
cordance with the Massachusetts system, are at the ancient county -seat, Taunton. 

For a list of town records preserved in Little Compton town-hall made by C. S. 
Brigham in 1903, see Annual Report of American Historical Association 1903, vol. 1, 
page 600. 

(-) History of Newport County. Richard M. Bayles, New York, L. E. Preston 
& Co., 1888. The chapter on Little Compton, written by H. W. Blake. 



64 BI-CENTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Massachusetts; and all our early government was from 
Plymouth, all our early associations Puritan. It was not 
till 1746 that Tiverton and Little Compton were set oj0f as 
part of Rhode Island, and the boundary line was a fruitful 
source of dissension until it was finally established by the 
Supreme Court of the United States in 1862. 

Although the actual beginning of Little Compton was in 
the lonely settlement of Colonel Church in 1674, it would 
seem that the legal and political formation of our town 
sprung from a sort of western land speculation, — a real es- 
tate deal on the part of the good Puritans of Plymouth that 
invites interesting investigation. 

As far as Plymouth is concerned the lands lying between 
Cape Cod Bay and Narragansett Bay were a sort of great 
unexplored West. After a half century of settlement Ply- 
mouth had passed the infant period and its men of affairs 
began "to look around" for profitable investments. 

"It would appear," says Mr. Blake, ^ "by implication, at 
least, from the Plymouth record that there were two classes 
embraced in the population, and that to the one lands were 
granted by the other in recognition of services rendered." 
Whether these "services" were rendered in war, or pesti- 
lence, or road building, or domestic labor, I am unable to 
ascertain. 

The earliest record known to relate especially to Little 
Compton, that is Saconet, bears date of June 4th, 1661, 
and shows "Libertie is granted unto some who were for- 
merly servants whoe have land due unto them by covenant, 
to Nominate some persons to the Court, or to some of the 
Magistrates, to bee deputed in their behalf to purchase par- 
cell of land for their accommodation att Saconett."^ 

When this "authority" came to be exercised a good many 
"got aboard" who were by no means servants. In fact a 
sort of supplementary enabling act was passed in 1662 un- 
der which "Captain Willett is appointed by the court to 
purchase the lands of the Indians which is granted unto 
such that were servants, and others that were ancient free- 



Q-") Bayles' History, p. 975. 

(-) Ibid. : also Dexter's Church's King Philip's War, 1865, Vol. I, p. 2, note. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 65 

men, which the oourt thinks meet to add to them that have 
an interest in the said grant * * * " etc. 

The lands of Tiverton and Fall River were taken up 
about the same time by two similar companies: The Pur- 
chasers of Pocasset and the Proprietors of Puncatest. 

The town of Little Compton was laid out in plots on pa- 
per before any white man had settled in it, and it is inter- 
esting to note that its external boundaries are retained 
more closely to-day than any other town in Rhode Island 
with, as someone has remarked, the single exception of New 
Shoreham.i With possibly two or three exceptions the 
original grantees never saw the land until after the allot- 
ments were made. 

On the 22d day of July, 1673, twenty-nine men appeared 
at Plymouth and claimed their respective shares. The de- 
serving ''servants" I fear were in the minority for the twen- 
ty-nine comprised mostly prominent men: His Excellency 
Governor Josiah Winslow, Constant Southworth, Daniel 
Wilcox, William Merrick, and Simon Rouse, — these with 
thirteen others, proved title in their own right ; John Wash- 
borne claimed a share as a freeman, and fourteen others, in- 
cluding Benjamin Church, Joseph Church, John Richmond, 
William Pabodie, claimed in the right of others, which right 
they had doubtless secured by purchase from the servants 
aforesaid. 

These twenty-nine were the original proprietors of Sa- 
conet, whose records our worthy Town Clerk, Mr. John B. 
Taylor, so sedulously guards in his big safe, and upon whose 
title, thus conferred, all our landed interests in Little 
Compton are dependent at law. They were mostly resi- 
dents of Duxbury (the home of Standish and Alden), and 
Marshfield (where Governor Winslow and Peregrine White 
lived), and the adjacent country. 

Although title at English law was complete by the grant 
of the Plymouth Colony there were still the moral rights of 
the Indians to be considered. 

At the first meeting of the proprietors it was agreed that 



(1) Block Island. 



66 BI-CBNTENNIAL CBLBBBATION OF THE UNITED 

a committee of three be appointed to go and purchase these 
lands of the Indians. The first tract, comprising most of 
the township west of the Common, was secured for the sum 
of seventy-five pounds sterling, in the fall of 1673. 

Mr. Blake recalls' that only forty years before this oc- 
currence Koger Williams was compelled ^'for the sake of 
public peace" to burn a paper in which he advanced the doc- 
trine that no English grant, though from the King himself, 
would be valid unless the natives had been fully recom- 
pensed. 

THE TOWN^S CHANGE OF NAME. 

The name Little Compton soon supplanted the native 
name, following the prevailing custom of naming settle- 
ments after English towns, though generally no appropri- 
ateness is evinced in the naming. 

The records of the Court of Plymouth show that, upon 
the petition of Mr. Joseph Church and the other Proprie- 
tors, the name Little Compton was given and the place le- 
gally constituted a township on June 6, 1682 ;2 though pre- 
vious to that, in the original book of records of the Propri- 
etors of Saconet, there is an entry relating to "Saconet or 
Little Compton" dated February — 1682. ^ For a long 
time after that the names were employed interchangeably, 
sometimes the double expression "Little Compton alias Sa- 
conet" being used for definiteness.* 

The Rev. William Emerson, father of Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson, and brother-in-law to Rev. Mase Shepard, suggested 
omitting "Little" from the name in the first published arti- 
cle about Little Compton, as though it were belittling the 



(») Bayles' History of Newport County, page 978. 

(') Bayles'History of Rhode Island, page 994, transcribes date July 7. The Genea 
logical Dictionary of Rhode Island, J. O. Austin, p. 43, gives the date June 6, 1682, 
correctly. 

(») " February, 1682. As many of the Proprietors as could conveniently be treated, 
■were willing to accommodate John Price with Ten Acres of Land at Saconet or Little 
Compton in order to his Dwelling there," etc. (The editor hopes that the ancient 
word " treated " will not suffer any modern misconstruction.) Original records of 
the Proprietors, part 2 (i. e., the back part of the book, the volume being reversed) 
page 6; Otis Wilbor's copy of the records Vol. 1, page 190. 

(*) Records of Proprietors, May 18, 1686, Otis Wilbor's copy, p. 74; May 17, 1693 
Ibid p. 80. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 67 

towii's dignity. 1 This heresy has been repeated in later 
jears. I hope the suggestion may never be adopted. 

LITTLE COMPTON IN THE OLD COUNTRY. 

Little Compton in England is a very ancient though un- 
important village in the Edge Hills on the southern boun- 
dary of Warwickshire. Nearby is a "four-shire stone" lo- 
cated where the counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Warwick 
and Worcester meet. 

Little Compton boasts the stately manor-house of Arch- 
bishop Juxon, who was a boon companion to Charles I, and 
his attendant on the scaffold at Whitehall. The town con- 
tains, besides ancient Eoman remains, some interesting 
relics of the time; and curious stories are recorded of how 
the Archbishop's sporting proclivities roused the ire of the 
Cromwellian soldiers. 

The village is mentioned in Domesday Book, 1086 A. D. 
At the time of our settlement it contained only 180 inhabi- 
tants and thirty-five houses ; and at the time of our Revolu- 
tion, it having increased to only 282 inhabitants, was thus 
early outdistanced by its American namesake, which then 
boasted of 1,232. 

The history and description of Little Compton in Eng- 
land may be found in the Memoirs of Archbishop Juxon, 
one of its later ministers.^ 

THE INDIANS. 

You are all aware that Little Compton was occupied by 
the small tribe of Saconet Indians, while the Pocassets lived 
in what is now Tiverton and Fall River. The Indian names 
of these localities were Little Compton, Saconet; Tiverton 
Four Corners (or rather the neck of land to the southwest), 
Punlcatcst, and Tiverton, Pocasset.^ The latter names have 
come down to us in Pocasset Neck and Puncatest Neck. 
Into the etymology of the word Saconet it seems useless to 

(1) Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, tst Series, vol. 9, p. 199. 

(2) Memoirs of Archbishop Juxon, London, James Parker & Co., 3869. Copy in 
Boston Public Library. 

(3) Pocasset included all the land from Fall River to Pachet Brook. 



("iS BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

inquire, as every authority who has tried it has either hon- 
estly given it up, or endeavored to frame some fanciful con- 
nection with the sound of certain Indian words. Thus we 
have "wild goose," "haunt of the black goose," "conquered 
territory," "widening of the stream," etc. ; "black goose" 
seems to have been the accepted meaning for a long time, 
but the learned annotator, Dr. Henry M. Dexter, in his edi- 
tion of Church's Indian War, repudiates that derivation.^ 
For myself I am inclined to think the whole question is a 
"wild goose" chase at best. 

Nor is there any one correct spelling. Colonel Church, 
spelling it as he heard it from the Indians, Sogkonate; 
later writers spelled it Soughkonate, Sakonate, Seconet, etc. 
In the ancient town records it is written Seconet or Saconet.'- 
Kecently the local usage has drifted into the form Seacon- 
net, which seems to be objectionable because it has led to the 
mistaken idea that the place derives its name from its prox- 
imity to the sea. 

The U. S. government, on its maps and charts, has 
adopted, probably for no very learned reason, the spelling 
Sakonnet, and as this seems to be as near to what was prob- 
ably the Indian pronunciation as anything, the golf club, 
the hotel and most of the summer residents have made use 
of that spelling. 

AWASHONKS. 

The name most familiar to us among all the Saconet In- 
dians is that of Awashonks. She was the squaw-sachem 
of the tribe at the time of the English settlement. She lived 
to a good old age in this place and died here; and her re- 
mains were probably buried in the ancient Indian burying- 
ground on William T. Peckham's land, north of what we 
call the Swamp road. The rock inscribed with her name by 
the late Mr. I. C. Wilbour was intended by him to commem- 
orate her memory though not to mark her grave. 

Her real name was probably Aioa, a common Indian giv- 



(1) Church's King Philip's War, edited by H. M. Dexter, Boston, 1865, Vol. I, page 
2, note. 

(2) Drake says "Commdnly called 5eeo>i,et." Hist, and Biog. p. 249; Dexter adopt- 
ed Snconet. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. G9 

en-name, SMmks or Shonks being a title wliicli meant squaw 
sachem. ^ 

Poor, good woman, she deserves more than i)assing men- 
tion in our history' for she was of Icindly nature and she 
learned too well the truth of the proverb: ^'Uneasy lies the 
head that wears a crown." She was the faithful ally of the 
settlers through all the Indian wars, and wisely submitted 
to the friendly guidance of Colonel Church, although oppos- 
ing all the affiliations of race and kindred.^ 

The Awashonks people, like all the Indians from the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence to the Savannah River, were Algonquins. 
This great race was divided into many nations and tribes. 
The Narragansetts occupied the lower half of the mainland 
of Rhode Island west of Narragansett Bay; the Pequots 
and Mohegans dwelt west of them in Connecticut and New 
York; the Massachusetts in Eastern Massachusetts, and the 
Wampanoags in the vicinity of Plymouth and westerly to 
Narragansett Bay. The home of the Wampanoag chief was 
at PokanoTcet, or Mt. Hope, which latter name, by the way, 
Mr. Dexter says is Indian Montaup and Mr. Drake insists 
is English Mount Hope.^ Our Saconets, their Tiverton 
neighbors, the Pocassets, and the Nipmucks who dwelt fur- 
ther north, were small Wampanoag tribes. 

ORIGIN OF TFIB INDIAN TRIBES. 

Mr. Field* says that it is useless to attempt any mention 
of the various guesses at the origin of the Indian tribes. 
Little more is known than when Roger Williams wrote: 
^'Frora Adam and Noah that they spring is granted on all 

hands." 

Roger Williams, like others who have had to do with In- 
dians, was benevolently inclined at first; and while he never 



(1) Biography and History of the Indians of North America. Samuel G. Drake, 
page 248, note. 

(2) For a biography of Awashonks see Biography and History of the Indians of 
North America, Samuel G. Drake, page 249; also Dexter's Benjamin Church's King 
Philip's War, Vol. I, p. 6, note. 

(S) Biography and History of the Indians, Drake, p. K'i, note; Church's King 
Philip's War, H. M. Dexter, Vol. 1, p. 7. 

(*) State of Rliode Island at the End of the Century, Vol. I, p. 10. 



70 BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

went as far as General Sheridan, who is said to have de- 
clared, "There was no good Indian but a dead Indian," in 
the latter part of his life wrote: "All Indians are ex- 
tremely treacherous." ^ 

AN INDIAN TRADITION. 

Longfellow helped to rescue the picturesque mythology of 
the Indians from oblivion. A page from the legendary that 
inspired his song was written upon our shore. In the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society Collections of 1792, you will 
find a curious tradition which relates that the first Indian 
on the Vineyard, by some demonic power, caused his chil- 
dren to be turned into fish ("killers"). The mother 
mourned "so exceedingly that he threw her away. She fell 
upon Seconet near the rocks, where she lived some time, ex- 
acting contributions of all who passed by water. After a 
while she was turned into a stone. The entire shape re- 
mained for many years, but after the English came some of 
them broke off her arms, head, etc., but the most of the body 
remains to this day." 

RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS. 

It is to the lasting credit of the early settlers of this place 
that though as Indian fighters they were second to none, 
their relations with the neighboring Indians were, first, last 
and all the time, friendly. I know of no other community 
where friendly relations existed until the Indian race had 
become extinct; where treaties had been made and honestly 
lived up to. One of the lasting regrets of Colonel Church's 
life was that the arrogant and ill-advised authorities at 
Plymouth abrogated his solemn promises to the Saconets, 
and, at one time at least, sold their men into slavery. 

The whole Saconet tribe probably never numbered more 
than a thousand. Drake says that in 1700 there were a 
hundred Indian men among them. Blake says that when 
their church was organized there were only two hundred In- 
dians in Little Compton. Their village, at that time a mere 



(») state of Rhode Island at the End of the Centurj', Vol. I, p. 15. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 71 

collection of huts, was located northwest of the Caleb 
Mosher place,i east of the town on the way to Westport. 
At about the year 1750 an epidemic carried off many of 
them, and in 1803 there were not above ten Indians in Lit- 
tle Compton. 

The death of Sarah Howdee, the last of the tribe, occurred 
at Little Compton and was reported in the Providence 
Journal, May 7, 1827. 

FORMATION OF THE TOWNSHIP. 

Title having been obtained to the land, the proprietors 
met at Duxbury; they had a rude plan drawn of the land 
between the Pocasset, that is the Tiverton, line, just south 
of Pachet Brook and Taylor's Lane, the line of the Common 
and the river; this tract they divided like a gridiron, east 
and west, into thirty-two long strips or sections, about thir- 
ty-five rods wide and one to two miles long. 

The proprietors met at Duxbury, April 10, 1674, and drew 
lots for these sections. Benjamin Church and Joseph 
Church, each being entitled to two sections, and one being 
reserved for the minister. There were thirty-two sections, 
though only twenty-nine proprietors. 

Within a year Benjamin Church and probably John 
Almy and John Irish ^ settled and built houses. Benjamin 
Church apparently did not build at once upon either of the 
lots which fell to him, but upon one of his choice well up 
near the Tiverton line, apparently on the southern slope of 
Windmill Hill, the location having been purchased by him 
from William Pabodie.^ He later lived on what is now Ed- 
ward Howland's farm, and finally moved to the James Irving 
Bailey farm. 

It is said that the oldest portion of the B. F. Wilbur 
house, near the Swamp road, was built by him for one of 
his sons. 

A roadway, eight rods wide, was reserved, running due 

(>) Bavles' History, p. 991. O Infra, p. 87. 

(3) I gather this from Baylf-s' History, p. 981, and Otis Wilbor's map supra. 
Though Mr. Dextor (Church's King Philip's War, Vol. 1, page U. note) locates 
Church's early home on Lot 19, which he drew, which is the site of the late Edward 
W. Howland's farm. 



72 BI-CENTENNIAL CBLBBEATION OP THE UNITED 

south, across the great lots. This road has been gener- 
ally retained excepting as to the portions between Mrs. 
Drummond's above the Common road, and Taylor's lane. 
We may wonder if the ghosts of these early settlers have 
been engaged during these recent moonlight nights in crit- 
ical observation of the operations of the stone crusher and 
the steam-roller upon this ancient highway.^ 

A second purchase was made by the same proprietors in 
the same year, 1673, for $116 2-3. ^ It contained all of the 
land at the south shore east of Bailey's swamp; other pur- 
chases followed of the intervening land, although allot- 
ments do not appear to have been made till 1675. After 
that, successive allotments speedily followed, till all the 
land in Little Compton was taken up. 

Interest in the real estate business seems to have been 
brought to a standstill at the outset by King Philip's War 
in 1675. 

At the breaking out of the war, by the advice of Church, 
the proprietors set off a tract three-quarters of a mile 
square south of Taylor's Lane, including the farms now oc- 
cupied by David and Philip Wilbour and Mrs. George Gray, 
for the use of Awashonks. 

KING Philip's war. 

The immediate cause of King Philip's war was the execu- 
tion of three Wampanoags charged with the murder of a 
converted Indian. The real issue, however, was the innate 
race enmity and jealousy at the aggression of the settlers. 

Six messengers were sent by Philip from Mount Hope to 
Awashonks to solicit her alliance in the war, and to tell her 
that a great armj' was coming to invade the Indian terri- 
tory. These ambassadors were received cordially by the 
Saconets and a great dance was given. The faithful queen 
sent immediately to Colonel Church, who, attended only by 
an Indian interpreter, repaired at once to the scene of fes- 
tivities. Here, he says, they found hundreds of Indians 



(>) First half mile Macadam road in Little Compton, 1903. 

C) These various purchases and allotments are located on Otis Wilbor's map 
supra. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 73 

gathered from all corners of the queen's domain. ''Awa- 
shonks her self, in a foaming Sweat, was leading the Dance. 
But she was no sooner sensible of Mr. Churches arrival, but 
she broke off, sat down, calls her Nobles round her, orders 
Mr. Church to be invited into her presence." ^ She put the 
question to the Colonel, point blank, whether the story of the 
invasion was true, and the wily colonel, probably not know- 
ing just what was afoot, asked ''whether she thought he 
would have brought up his goods to settle in that place if 
he apprehended an entering into war with so near a neigh- 
bor." The six Mount Hope men (or Pokanokets'^ ) , in all 
their war paint, were confronted with the redoubtable col- 
onel, and Awashonks proceeded to explain to him that their 
very agreeable message was that unless she would make an 
alliance with Philip he would secretly burn the houses and 
kill the cattle of the English, that she would get the credit 
of it, and the vengeance of the whites would fall upon her. 
The captain's blunt answer, intended undoubtedly for the 
ears of the royal ambassadors, was, if Philip was bent on 
war the best thing she could do would be to have these six 
Pokanokets knocked in the head and slielter herself under 
the protection of the English. This cool-blooded but very 
effectual bluff settled the whole business as far as Awa- 
shonks and her tribe were concerned, but it brought down 
upon the doughty colonel the righteous indignation of sev- 
eral thin-skinned historians. 

Church, bidding Awashonks to stay within her reserva- 
tion, hastened to Poeasset, where, on the hill above Stone 
Bridge, he had an audience with Weetamoe,-'^ Queen of the 
Pocassets, and urged her alliance with the English. This 
he was unable to secure, she declaring that all her people 
had gone, against her will, to Philip's dance, as war was 
certain. 

Having made sure of these facts, Church, with incredible 
celerity, hastened to Plymouth, reaching there after a jour- 
ney of forty-two miles from Tiverton, or fifty from Little 

(') Dexter's Church's Kina; Philip's War. Vol. I, p. C 
(2) Biog. and Hist, of Indians of N. A. 8. G. Drake, p. 252. 

(») Weetamoe was the wife of Wamsutta and therefore sister-in-law of 
King Philip. 



74 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Compton, by the next morning, having collected the Com- 
mittee of Safety on his way. 

The war was then on. Maj. William Bradford, son of 
Gov. Bradford, of the Mayfloiver, was given command of the 
Plymouth soldiers, and he at once requested Church to ac- 
company him and to use his influence to secure the co-opera- 
tion of the "Gentleman of Rhode Island." This courteous 
diplomacy seemed necessary because Rhode Island had been 
excluded from the confederacy of the New England colonies, 
formed for mutual defence in 1643, — "on account of her 
heretical toleration of religious freedom, and her open ad- 
vocacy of liberty of conscience," says one historian; and 
"because they had not been able to institute a government 
such as could be relied on for the fulfilment of stipulations 
mutually made by the four colonies," says another.^ 

Church being cut off from Little Compton, the friendly 
Awashonks was left in entire uncertainty as to what pro- 
tection she could expect from Plymouth ; her people mean- 
while were carried away by the tide of Philip's early suc- 
cesses. 

Church at the time was in the thick of the fighting north 
of Mount Hope Bay, in Swansea. He was wounded in the 
Great Swamp Fight, Dec. 19, 1675, receiving "one bullet in 
the thigh, a small flesh wound at the waist, and a pair of 
wounded mittens." The narration of this affair, and par- 
ticularly of his hand-to-hand encounter, after being 
wounded, with a greased and naked Indian, is breezy read- 
ing. 

After many adventures Church made a desperate effort 
to break southward through the hostile Pocassets to keep 
his pledge with Awashonks. With about forty soldiers he 
hastened from Fall River to Bristol, over Bristol Ferry the 
same night, the next night across the Saconet, where Stone 
Bridge now is, and was lying in wait for the enemy before 
daybreak. An anticipated fight was spoiled because one of 
the Plymouth soldiers "troubled with the epidemical plague 
of lust after tobacco must needs strike fire to smoke it and 



(') Church's King Philip's War, Dexter, Vol. 1, p. 17, note. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 75 

thereby discovered the soldiers to tlie enemy who precipi- 
tately fled." 

THE FIGHT OF THE PEASE-FIELD. 

Church piloted the company down to Tocasset (or Pun- 
katees) Neck, west of Tiverton Four Corners, where they 
succeeded in getting undiscovered into Mr. Almy's pease- 
field. * Here they were surprised by a whole horde of well- 
armed Indians and Church gave his Plymouth men their 
first taste of real Indian fighting. The colonel, almost sin- 
gle-handed, kept off the Indians, while his men were taken, 
one or two at a time, into canoes which had been sent over 
from Portsmouth, for the soldiers' deliverance, when the 
fighting was observed from the other shore. Then, levelling 
at the enemy his gun which was loaded with his last charge, 
the colonel walked boldly across the pease-field. He picked 
up his hat and coat where he had dropped them, and re- 
gained his fellows in their canoes amid a hail of bullets. 
Two of these struck the canoe as he got into it, one grazed 
his hair, while another was embedded in a small stake which 
was close to his breast. 

He embarked all his twenty men safely, after a six hours' 
engagement with 300 Indians ; a deliverance which the good 
gentleman often refers to in his history "to the glory of God 
and His protecting providence." I scarcely ever ride over 
Windmill Hill, or sail down the Sakonnet River, without 
trying to picture this lively fight in my awakened imagina- 
tion. There are many such stirring incidents recorded in 
Colonel Church's history. 

THE TREATY. 

It is impossible to follow Colonel Church through the 
perils and adventures of the war. I commend his book to 
your reading as really containing material for two or three 
modern romances; it is told in blunt, pictorial English and 
has the charm of truth. 

Besides the reception of the above-mentioned ''embassy" 
and the fight of the pease-field which occurred on the shore 

C) Church's King Philip'6 War, Dexter, Vol. 1, p. 31, and note p. 36. 



76 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBEATION OP THE UNITED 

lots west of Windmill Hill, there were two other interesting 
events which occurred in this town, viz. : the making of the 
famous treaty which occurred at the great rock on the Rev. 
William Richmond's farm,^ and Colonel Church's parley 
with the Indians at Sakonnet Point, which took place at 
Mr. Lloyd's bathing beach. The latter incident occurred 
during Colonel Church's hurried canoe trip from Wood's 
Holl to Portsmouth. - 

NOTABLE PERSONAGES. 

The name of one of the most influential of the original 
settlers, William Pabodie, seems to have been made immor- 
tal because of being his wife's husband. His grave is 
marked b}^ the ancient slate slab to the left of the monu- 
ment to "Betty" Alden. He was one of the twenty-nine 
who proved their shares at Plymouth in 1G73, and he, like 
the Churches, Richmond, Irish and Rouse, had a part in all 
the subsequent allotments. He was one of the committee 
sent to purchase the land of the Indians ; he was first clerk 
of the corporation, and the earlier part of the ancient book 
of records, since copied for the town's use by Otis Wilbour, 
is undoubtedly in his handwriting. I have no doubt that 
it was he who made the ancient map to which I made refer- 
ence as being among the town records. He and Elizabeth 
Alden were married at Duxbury in 1644. 

On which of his several allotments of land William Pa- 
bodie first settled is uncertain, but there is no doubt that 
he eventually bailt for his home that now venerable struct- 
ure which constitutes a part of the homestead of Mrs. 
George Gray. This was upon a small grant of land in the 
southern part of the Awashonks Reservation, which he 
drew in the allotment of 1681.^ Elizabeth was the daughter 
of John and Priscilla, of the Mayflower, of Plymouth and of 
Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish; it is pleasant to 
note that her descendant, John Alden, and his mother, who 



(') Dexter's Church's King Phillip's War, Vol. I, p. 77. Col- Church definitely 
locates this rock on Capt. Richmond's farm, which was lot No. 26, allotment of 1674. 
(») Ibid, p. 73. 
(») Lot 23, allotment of 16S1 ; see Otis Wilbor's ancient map. 




jSroiHiment to 
Elizabeth Alden Peabody 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 77 

is an antiquarian student of high order, have their summer 
home among us. 

The monument, into which Elizabeth's tombstone has 
been set, was erected in 1882 through tlie efforts of Mrs. 
Charles Wilbour, the great-aunt of our neighbor and rep- 
resentative, Philip H. Wilbour. This shaft is a proper me- 
morial to mark Mrs. Pabodie's last resting place, though 
there seems to be something of dispute concerning the state- 
ment that she was the first white woman born in New Eng- 
land, as the inscription on the monument records. 

One never feels the realism of long past events so keenly 
as when he experiences his first sensations in some ancient 
burial place of the historic dead : — among the effigies of 
Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, before the 
marble tombs and rude coffins of the French kings at Saint 
Denis, or beside the lead caskets of Ferdinand and Isabella 
in the cathedral crypt at Granada. A like realization of 
the nearness of past lives is aroused in one's mind on pro- 
ceeding, after an hour's retirement among the town's old 
books, into the ancient cemetery where he is confronted 
with the half-obliterated names of John Rouse, Constant 
Southworth, John Almy, Nathaniel Searle, and generation 
after generation of Pabodies, Richmonds, Churches, 
Brownells, Baileys, Grays, Grinnells, and the rest. 

One fondly stoops to trace the archaic records on the fast- 
scaling stones, and conjures up in fancy those incidents 
which have come down to us in the lives of those whom 
they commemorate. We are told, for instance, that Col. 
Benjamin Church "was carried to his grave in great funeral 
pomp, and was buried under arms." Cannot Fancy picture 
that winter day in 1718 ; the open grave by the little, gray 
meeting-house, the great concourse of villagers, Indians, 
clergymen, dignitaries from Providence, Newport, Ply- 
mouth, men in steeple hats and knee breeches, women in 
straight gowns and kirtles, the pillioned horses hitched and 
feeding around the then broader confines of the Common. 
And good Pastor Billings now resting in a neighboring 
grave, standing, with great Bible in hand, while the long 
rifles or bell-mouthed guns of the soldiers sound the last 



78 BI-CENTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

tribute which reverberates across fields and woodlands 
made habitable by the prowess of the dead warrior. 

Then another scene, not attended with marshal pomp, 
but appealing more tenderly to our sensibilities. Again 
an open grave, one a few paces from Colonel Church's tomb, 
— again the little gray meeting-house, now darkened by the 
weathering of a hundred winters, — a great concourse of 
mourners around the towering,^ gowned form of the Rev. 
Mase Shepard, the good pastor — shepherd in name and in 
fact, at the grave of his own beloved son, John Haskins 
Shepard, applying to his own stricken heart the consolation 
which he had so often meted out to his afflicted people. The 
erect form, the bowed head, the beloved familiar face, calm 
with the schooling which inures the New Englander to re- 
press the expression of grief, — the stillness of the evening, 
broken by the utterance of self-abnegation : "Not my will 
but thine, O God, be done !" 

As we pass from the graves of the Shepards, father and 
son, — reverently noting those of Richard Billings and 
Jonathan Ellis, the earlier ministers, — going toward the 
Pabodie monument, we observe a low, slate stone, with 
placid, graven cherub and ornate border decoration. The 
inscription reads: "In memory of Mr. Richard Grinnell, 
who departed this life March 15th, 1789, in the 73d year of 
his age." 

Some wild and fanciful stories are told of the voyaging 
of the man who, oblivious of all, reposes beneath this mod- 
est memorial. The folklore of the town would have it that 
he was a gallant sailor man whose flag was sometimes the 
Union Jack and sometimes the Jolly Roger. 

•' And wickedly he sailed 
As he sailed, as he sailed!" 

Indeed, it used to be whispered that he was a jovial fel- 
low-marauder of the famous Captain Kidd. When, how- 
ever, we come to line these stories up against the measuring 

(1) "His weight was fully two hundred, and his figure erect and symmetrical." 
175th Anniversary pamphlet, p. 47. The old portion of the present residence of Mr. 
J. B. Richmond was the house of Rev. Mase Shepard. His grave is shown at the left 
of the church in the frontispiece. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 79 

stick of history, we find that like many of the oft-told leg- 
ends, they do not coincide with the facts. For, in this case, 
we find that Captain Kidd died before Captain Grinnell 
was born ; and in this way I am afraid will go all the fanci- 
ful traditions which have been told at many a winter fireside 
concerning this famous man. He was the son-in-law of 
pastor Billings, was a good sailor and a successful mer- 
chant, and a man of exemplary habits. It is quite possible 
that his temporal prosperity excited the imaginations of the 
envious to create tales which might be derogatory to the 
good captain's influence in the community. 

No stone in the cemetery has occasioned more speculation 
than that of "'Elizabeth, who should have been the wife of 
Simeon Palmer." There are various stories connected with 
this good lady. Why this curious phraseology is graven 
over her last resting place no one knows, but certain sug- 
gestive facts appear upon the town records. Her name, 
which the stone for some reason, or probably no reason, 
conceals, was Elizabeth Mortimer. She Avas born in 1712 
and died, so the record says, August 10th, 1776; the stone, 
possibly recording the day of burial, is marked August 14th. 

Elizabeth was, in fact, the wife of Simeon Palmer, having 
been married to him by the Rev. Jonathan Ellis Sept. 5, 
1755. She, therefore, was his wife during twenty-one long 
years. Let us hope the romance, if romance there was, 
ended happily. She was Simeon's second wife, he having 
been married in 1723 to Lydia Dennis, who having given 
birth to six children died in 1754. That no unkind feelings 
existed because of the earlier marriage is shown by the fact 
that Elizabeth's only child bore the name of Simeon's first 
wife — Lydia. 

The good old aunties of our town have told the little chil- 
dren, and those little children when they became good old 
aunties have told other little children startling stories of 
how it happened that Elizabeth failed to become the wife 
of Simeon Palmer. One of these which had considerable 
vogue was that the haughty-minded Elizabeth refused, on 
the evening of her wedding day, to partake of a supper of 
cat meat which the frugality of her husband had suggested; 



80 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

and horrified at such a method of life, but mindful of the 
obligations of her marriage vow, had thereafter, though liv- 
ing separate from him, always performed the wifely duties 
of repairing Simeon's clothing and darning his hosiery. I am 
afraid that the hard-minded searcher after facts, while he 
cannot avoid being interested in these traditions, will brush 
them aside with those of the Arabian horse and Algerine 
princess of the famous sailor-man, "Pirate Dick." ^ 

Simeon was unquestionably a man of prominence in the 
community and was town attorney in 1796. 

THE FRENCH WARS. 

Fortunate in its friendly relations with the natives, the 
successive storms of the French and Indian wars passed 
around our peaceful peninsula by sea and by land. It 
would seem, however, that the community sent its quota, 
both of ofBcers and men, to each of the four wars and boun- 
ties were freely offered for enlistments. 

It is recorded that after Braddock's defeat, "Jonathan 
Ellis at Little Compton and Joseph Fish at Westerly 
preached to their respective congregations on the justice of 
the war and prayed for the success of the armies."^ 

Edward Eichmond, one of the original settlers, had been 
a lieutenant in King Philip's War. He was a lawyer by 
profession ; he held various civil positions, and was the col- 
onial attorney-general 1677-80. He was one of the grantees 
named in the first deed from Awashonks to the settlers 
which was made in 1673. He was commissioned captain 
(1690) during King William's War, about the time that 
Benjamin Church was sent by Governor Hinkley, of Massa- 
chusetts Bay to the Coast of Maine. ^ His last resting place 
is the oldest identified grave in the town (1696). It is in 
the family burial-place on the old farm now owned by Rev. 
William Richmond. This farm was allotted to Edward 



(') Note : In a subsequently published story (1905), entitled Saint Abigail of the 
Pines, Elizabeth's curious epitah has been made use of without her permission and 
with no acknowledgment to her. 

(') Field's State of Rhode Island, etc. Vol. 1, page 198. 

(') Austin's Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 163. 



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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 81 

Kichuioud's brother, John, at the first drawing in 1G74, as 
lot 26. John was a wealthy resident of Taunton and ap- 
parently never lived in Little Oompton. 

Col. Sylvester Richmond was commissioned lieutenant in 
1710, during Queen Anne's reign, and as colonel by Gov- 
ernor Shirley, under George II in 1742. The original docu- 
ments of the commission as colonel and various communica- 
tions from Gov. Shirley are in possession of the family. He 
married the granddaughter of Elizabeth Pabodie— "Betty 
Alden" (1693). 

Colonel Richmond is buried near his son Perez within the 
shadow of this church, of which he was one of the original 
incorporators. 

Col. Sylvester Richmond's two sons, Sylvester, — 1698- 
1783, and Perez, — 1702-1770, both of whom were born here, 
were prominent in the French Wars. The former removed 
to Dighton about 1723. He commanded the Sixth ]\Iassa- 
chusetts Regiment at the siege of Louisburg under Sir Wil- 
liam Pepperrell. ^ 

In acknowledgment of his services he was invited to Eng- 
land to receive the thanks of the Crowm. He declined the 
honor for himself, but sent his eldest son, Ezra, to King 
George II, who conferred a commission upon him.^ 

It is said that Col. Richmond was the only American who 
entered Louisburg properly exemplifying the care of the 
American housewives. The rigors of the siege had ex- 
hausted everything in the camp in the way of purple and 
fine linen save only one finely ruffled shirt which the colonel 
had carefully stowed away in the bottom of his gripsack in 
order that he might appear creditably at the anticipated 
victory. Much did his comrades marvel at the colonel's 
spick and span appearance on that famous occasion. 

Capt. Perez Richmond was commissioned to serve under 
his brother, the colonel, in 1742. His commission is also 
preserved. His estate lay partly in Westport and partly 



(':> Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series VI., Vol. 10, appendix 
p. 505. 

(2) The Richmond Family, J. B. Richmond, p. 37. 



82 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

in Little Compton, and his remains rest in the cemeten^ be- 
side this church. 

You will find on the gravestone of his wife, Deborah, this 
mournful couplet: 

" Farewell, vain world, thou hast been to nie 
Dust and a shadow; these I leave with thee." 

Let us suppose that this melancholy condition, if, indeed, 
it were hers, was due to the early demise of the lamented 
Perez whom she survived a dozen years. 

The older Colonel Sylvester had a son William, who was 
judge and town clerk of this town (1731) ; he in turn had 
two sons, Barzillai and William, both born in Little Comp- 
ton, who were colonels in the King's Army in the French 
and Indian Wars. Both were at the siege of Ticonderoga 
in Colonel Dalrymple's regiment. 

William early moved to Providence, and Richmond Street 
in that city is named for him. He raised four companies 
of soldiers, over one of which he was captain, for the re-en- 
forcement of General Johnson's command at Crown Point. 

Barzillai's brother, William, was a famous son of Little 
Compton in Revolutionary times ; he had also served in Can- 
ada and at Crown Point, as lieutenant, under his brother. 

The Richmonds were not the only family whose sons hon- 
ored this community in helping to maintain English su- 
premacy in the colonies; with the above record, however, 
they seem to have been very prominent all through this fate- 
ful period, and I mention them as significant of the impor- 
tant part that our little town played in colonial affairs. 

Col. Benjamin Church, though not as conspicuous as he 
was in King Philip's War, was equally active in King Wil- 
liam's and Queen Anne's Wars. He was in command of five 
different expeditions on the coast of Maine and the Bay of 
Fundy, including a fruitless adventure against Port Royal 
(1704). The second book of his history is the narrative of 
these expeditions. 

During the interval between the French Wars and the 
Revolution. Little Compton prospered. Remote from any 
seaport, the town was, in colonial days as it is now, some- 






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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 83 

What isolated. Its industry was agricultural, while that of 
Its neighbors, Newport and New Bedford, was mercantile 
and maritime. But farming in those days was profitable 
Two ferries facilitated traffic with Newport Island; How- 
land's Ferrv, where Stone Bridge now is, and Taggart's 
Ferry which plied between Fogland Point and Middletown. 

That this means of transport was attended with danger 
is evidenced by the laconic record on one of the stones in 
the churchyard : ^'Sacred to the memory of Mr. Galen Tay- 
lor, drowned by upsetting of a ferry-boat while passing 
from Rhode Island to Little Compton." Nevertheless, our 
Commons became a way station for traffic between Newport 
and New Bedford and Plymouth. 

Windmills began to spread their picturesque wings. Col- 
onel Church's grandson, Thomas, erected a windmill near 
the site of Dr. Gardner's house, although Mr. Blake says 
this mill was built by William Roach, who owned the farm 
after the Revolution. 

Another mill was built at a later period on the Commons 
nearly opposite the church, and just back of Miss Wilbour's 
house. On the top of Windmill Hill there stood another 
great sail -spreader which was probably the unknowing 
cause of our long hauls up that sightly elevation. This mill 
was built in 1828 by Mr. Cook Almy, who sold it to George 
A, Gray, and he in turn removed its bulky usefulness to his 
farm — the old Pabodie Farm, where it went its daily rounds 
until 1880, Then, Daniel B, Almy lured it away to grace 
the fashionable hills across the river; there it still turns 
and grinds Johnnie-cake meal, an example of sobriety and 
economy within the purlieus of the wealthy, to the delight 
of tourists, artists and all loyal Rhode Islanders, 

Another mill, which stood upon the lot occupied by the 
Wilbour Cemetery, was owned by Mr. Clark Wilbor, father 
of our neighbor, Oliver H. Wilbor. After Mr. Clark Wil- 
bor's death, this mill was moved across the road, its sails 
were trimmed and now as the residence of the Rev. Dr. 
Thonms R. Slicer its ancient dome shelters the grinding of 
other grain. 

In 1724 it seems that church and state in Little Compton 



84 BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

were torn apart in that a new meeting-house was built and 
the old building used hitherto for worship and for town 
meetings, since 1693, was turned over to the secular uses of 
the Town Hall with a combined poorhouse and public tav- 
ern downstairs.^ 

This venerable structure, whose ancient respectability is 
now a trifle down at the heel, after a continued usefulness 
of 210 years was retired from public service without a pen- 
sion when the president of the United States was pleased 
to appoint a new postmaster for Little Compton and to 
move the post ofiSce across the road in the spring of 1904. 

I recently ascended to the attic which has been built 
within the rafters of the old Town Hall, Avhich was aban- 
doned in 1882. The history of this old building and the tra- 
ditions and associations connected with it have been handed 
down in a scholarly and sympathetic address delivered at 
the dedication of the new Town Hall by the late Isaac C. 
Wilbour. 

I tried, under the guidance of Brother Briggs, to picture 
to my mind the crowded upstairs room, the steep ascent 
and narrow entrance blocked on meeting days with a band 
of not always amicable village politicians. In old times 
among them were such notables as Gov. Isaac Wilbour, Col. 
Joseph Church, William Richmond and Lemuel Sisson; and 
within the recollection of some of you here, Deacon Rich- 
mond, Col. Nathaniel Church, his brother John, Deacon 
Bailey and Valentine Simmons. Then, the meeting packed 
into the little square amphitheatre, whose seats rose to the 
eaves, with a gallery above, the latter being almost within 
reach of the speaker's hand, and general!}' lined with mis- 
chievous or awe-stricken small boys. 

Here were woven the web and woof of the political his- 
tory of the town which the records show to be of a charac- 
ter far superior to that of many more pretentious New 
England communities. 

REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

That Little Compton was early pledged to the "policy of 



(') Isaac C. Wilbour's address, p. 9. 



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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 85 

industrial independence" and tliat we are Protectionists by 
heredity, is shown by the following Resolution recorded in 
1768: 

"Resolved: That Ave do engage that we will not 
purchase any of the following articles manufactured 
out of North America; and we will dis- 
courage the use of mourning apparel, gloves, etc., at 
funerals, except such as are of our own manufacture." 

That it never wavered Avhen a persistence in this doctrine 
led to resistance to constituted authority is evidenced by 
another Resolution, which was passed a month after the 
Boston Tea Party (February 3d, 1774). 

"That whereas there is an act of Parliament to levy 
a duty on tea inported into America, which is a tax 
on Americans, therefore it is Resolved, That we will 
stand ready wath our lives and fortunes, not only to 
assist this colony but likewise the patriotic government 
of Massachusetts Bay, New York, Philadelphia, or any 
other of our sister colonies." 

When Boston v.as beginning to suffer the punishment in- 
flicted tlirough the closing of the port against commerce by 
the operation of the Boston Port Bill (June 18, 1774), patri- 
otic eloquence rolled through those two little windows from 
under the oaken timbers of 1693, and it crystallized itself 
into the following Resolution: 

"Resolved: That our delegates to the General As- 
sembly be instructed to aid in securing a grant from 
the General Treasury for the Poor of Boston who are 
suffering under the severity of arbitrary lavrs . . . 
but if a grant cannot be obtained out of the General 
Treasury, it is Voted : Resolved, we will make a grant 
out of our own Treasury." 

Again, in furtherance of the above (December 21, 1774,) 
a vote was passed in Town Meeting to raise thirty pounds 
for the suffering people in Boston,— against which practical 
effort I regret to say that Elizabeth's Simeon and one other 



86 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

conservative citizen recorded a solemn protest. Perhaps 
Simeon preferred to remain standing upon the proposition 
of getting an appropriation from the State General Assem- 
bly. 

On the same day that the above resolution was passed it 
was voted : 

"That the Association entered into and signed by the 
delegates of the Grand Continental Congress convened 
at Philadeli)hia, September 5, 1774, ought to be faith- 
fully kept and observed." 

I find many resolutions tending to show that the fires of 
patriotism were not suffered to fail upon our shores. Thus, 
November 29, 1776, ''that Adam Simmons be appointed to 
act with the Committee of Safety in furnishing the soldiers 
who are immediately to be raised in this town, with blan- 
kets, knapsacks, ^rearms, bayonets, and cartridge boxes, 
and Voted that this Town give thirty shillings lawful 
money, to be paid to each of fifteen able-bodied men who j 

shall first enlist out of the militia of this town." 

At the breaking out of the war the population of the town 
was 1,232, of which 304 were white males over sixteen years 
of age. ^ 

A state committee of safety had been convened, composed 
of one man from each county. William Kichmond, of Lit- 
tle Compton represented Newport county. - 

This man was the William Richmond previously referred 
to as a lieutenant at Crown Point. He was as conspicuous 
a figure in the community during the Revolution as his un- 
cle had been during the French Wars. He was colonel in 
the State Brigade in 1776,'' and although this command 
was broken up in a subsequent reorganization of the State 
militia he held his commission throughout the war, and was 
at one time military governor of Newport. It is said that 
Colonel Richmond's was one of the names urged upon Gen- 
eral Washington, along with those of General Sullivan and 
Colonel Lippett, when a general was to be appointed to com- 

0) Bayles' History, p. 1000. 

(«) Bayles' History p. 309. 

(3) For the roster of Col. Richmond's regiment, see Cowell's Spirit of '76, p. 23. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 87 

mand the army of defence during tlie British occupation of 
the island. 

In January, 1776, the British raided Prudence Island and 
burned seven houses there. Colonel Richmond, together 
with the subsequently famous Colonel Barton and other 
ofBcers, was dispatched with his command to drive them 
from the island. This, after a sharp engagement, they suc- 
ceeded in doing. 

In April, of the same year, he planted a battery on Bren- 
ton's point, and from this place of vantage he drove off the 
British ship Glasgoio and the transport Snoio, which were 
headed for Newport. ^ Later we find him with certain 
Ehode Island and Connecticut troops sent by Washington 
to the defense of Eastern Long Island. 

Many amusing anecdotes have been handed down con- 
cerning Colonel Richmond. The following may be found 
in the monumental work on the genealogy of the Richmond 
family, which v/as written by our neighbor, Joshua B. Rich- 
mond. It is told that while on a visit to his older brother, 
Barzillai, who was wedded to the old order of things, the 
following incident occurred: During morning devotions, 
after the Bible reading, when prayer was about to be of- 
fered, the colonel interrupted the proceedings with: ''I 
have been here now three days, every morning you have 
prayed and haven't mentioned the American Congress nor 
prayed for the success of the American arms. Now, by 
God! if you don't this morning I'll knock you down with 
this cane when you say Amen !" 

The following incident should be associated both with 
the veteran colonel and our ancient town hall : 

''Once, in high party times, Col. Richmond was told by 
the presiding officer that his vote would be taken out of the 
ballot box (though well known since boyhood to every man 
in the town), because he had not registered his name; the 
colonel replied : 'If you touch my vote, I shall come down 
with this cane on your head.' at the same time holding the 
vote in his left hand and the rebellious cane in the right 



(1) Bayles' History, p. 329 and p. oiO; Peterson's History of Khoilc Island, p. 211. 



88 BI-CENTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

hand. The officer attempted to extract the vote, and the 
cane came down and hindered the operation. A row en- 
sued, in the midst of which an unexpected combatant ap- 
peared. Primus Collins, who had been honored with elec- 
tion to the Negro governorship of Rhode Island (an ancient 
custom in that state), and who was always called Governor 
Collins, was in the gallery. The white of his eyes and of 
his teeth was soon visible, and exclaiming: 'It is about 
time for this darkey to drop!' he leaped from the gallery 
into the midst of the combatants, and by means of his black 
face, sudden appearance and vigorous blows scattered the 
opponents of 'Old Master' right and left, and the vote re- 
mained undisturbed."^ 

Colonel Richmond lived, died and was buried on the old 
family farm. Leaving no children, he bequeathed his prop- 
erty to the grandfather of the Rev. William Richmond ; the 
latter now makes the historic homestead his summer 
residence. 

Colonel Richmond gave a triangular lot out of this farm 
to old Primus. This little piece of land, being shaped like 
a smoothing-iron, was known for generations as the "Primus 
heater," just as the famous three-cornered building in New 
York by a corresponding simile, is called the "Flatiron 
Building." This lot was bought back many years after- 
ward by an uncle of the present owner so that the 
boundaries of the farm remain to-day as they were when the 
allotment was made to John Richmond as Lot No. 26, in 
1674. 

A Newport County regiment, the Third Rhode Island, 
was mustered in on May 3d, 1775, with Thomas Church of 
Little Compton as colonel. ^ He was a leading citizen of the 
town and state. He lived on the farm afterwards known 
as the Sisson farm at Sakonnet Point, and he sleeps where 
his devoted townsmen laid him, beside this building. 

I have Mr. Isaac C. Wilbour's authority for the statement 
that Little Compton then raised a company of twenty-four 
men under command of Capt. Thomas Brownell. 

(') The Richmond Family, J. B. Richmond, p. 74. 

(*) Field's History, Vol. I., p. 443; Peterson's History, p. 204; Cowell's Spirit of 
76, p. 16. 






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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 89 

The tradition that this company served at Bunlcer Hill, 
is. T think, misleading, for it appears that the Rhode Island 
regiments at that time were united to a so-called Army of 
Observation, which was dispatched to Boston under General 
Greene. They encamped first at Jamaica Plain, and, after- 
wards, at Cambridge, while the Providence Train of Artil- 
lery were stationed on Roxbury Neck. ^ 

Mr. John Austin Stevens says, "No Rhode Island troops 
were in the Battle of Bunker Hill."^ 

This may have been true as to Rhode Island commands, 
but it is quite certain that some Rhode Island individuals 
such as our own Jonathan Brownell and his son Sylvester, 
were among the heroes of that famous event. The Brown- 
ells went to the war with the Massachusetts soldiers, and 
Sylvester's commissions as captain and major, signed by 
Samuel Adams and John Hancock, respectively, hang in the 
parlor of the old Brownell homestead. In this house he 
died, in 1840, at the good old age of eight-two years. His 
son, Thomas Churcli Brownell, born in this place and named 
after the veteran's companion in arms, became rector of 
Trinity parish in New York, Episcopal bishop of Connecti- 
cut and first president of Trinity College. 

At the breaking out of the war, Capt. Thomas Brownell 
was, together with Col. William Richmond, a rei>resenta- 
tive of Little Compton in the General Assembly, and it is 
natural that he should have been prominent in the forma- 
tion of the local regiment. T am informed that the original 
roster of his company is in possession of ^Irs. Cliavles Ed- 
win Wilbour. 

In June, 1775, after the Battle of Bunker Hill, six coni- 
panies were raised to recruit the regiments before Boston ; 
two were from Newport county and one of these, the Ninth, 
appears to have been officered by Little Compton men: 
Thomas Gray, captain ;' Lemuel Bailey, lieutenant; and 
William Southworth. ensign. 



(i) Bayles' History, p. 312. 
(-) Bayles' History, p. 315. 

(3) Historical Regist«r of Officers of the Continental Army, F. B. Heit n-n. Wash 
in^ton, D. C, 1893. 



90 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

"In October. 1775, the General Assembly ordered another 
regiment to be raised for one year. It consisted of twelve 
companies containing 750 men. It was taken into Conti- 
nental pa}', and the oflScers received Continental commis- 
sions, when the regiment marched to the westward in Sep- 
tember, 1776." This was Col. William Richmond's regi- 
ment. 

Capt. William Manchester commanded one of the com- 
panies. 

In May, 1776, the Newport County regiment was divided 
into two regiments. The second regiment was made up of 
the companies from Tiverton and Little Compton. It was 
commanded by Colonel John Cooke. The First regiment 
comprised all the other companies from the county. ^ 

Toward the close of the war we find the following Little 
Compton soldiers enrolled in a regiment that was stationed 
at old Fort Ticonderoga in 1782, viz. : William Brownell, 
Isaac Peirce, Job Manchester, Gardner Brownell, Richard 
Peirce, David Maxfield, Stephen Manchester, and Gideon 
Coggshall. - 1 

Meanwhile the militia was strengthened for the defence ' 
of the town. In May, 1776, it was reorganized and divided 
into two companies officered as follows : First Company, i 
Gideon Simmons, captain; E])hraim Simmons, lieutenant; f 
William Bailey, ensign. Second Company, George Sim- ! 
mons, captain; David Cook, lieutenant, and Fobes Little, j 
Jr.. ensign. Second Company, George Simmons, captain; J 
David Cook, lieutenant, and Fobes Little, Jr., ensign. 1 

The record books are full of town legislation affecting the | 
war and frequent appropriations were made for the pay- | 
ment of bounties and supplies. I 

While the British army occupied Newport (1776-1779) I 
our shore was patrolled from Howland's Ferry (Stone- j 
bridge) to Sakonnet Point. The great camp was on Tiver- ; 
ton heights, the old Wing place was a commissary head- ] 



(>) Bayles' History of Newport County, p. 342. For roster, see Cowell's Spirit of 
'76, p. 25. 

(-) Coweirs Spirit of '76, p. 245. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. \)1 

quarters. Lafayette stopped for a time at the old house, 
now externally modernized, known as the Adoniram Brown 
place. Five houses in Little Compton were used as 
"watch-houses," *. e., sort of local headquarters, — places 
for changing guard, etc. Two of these, the houses now 
belonging to Thomas D. Grinnell and Samuel Gray 
stand to-day, externally about as they were in Revo- 
lutionary times. Capt. Ephraim Simmons was stationed 
at the Gray house. Mr. Grinnell's house on Brimstone Hiil 
is one of the most ancient in the town. In early times it 
was owned by the Irish family. ' During the Revolution it 
was used as a watch-house under command of Capt. John 
Davis. The other watch-houses were. Col. William Rich- 
mond's house; Capt. Benjamin Coe's house, which was the 
home of our neighbor, Albert T. Seabury, until it was re- 
moved to make room for his present residence; and farther 
south, the house of Capt. Thomas Church on the Sisson farm 
at Sakonnet Point. 

The guards kept a vigilant v.atch upon all that was going 
on upon the river and the "opposite shore, and especially 
upon the line of hostile boats which was stationed in the 
Sakonnet river to blockade Little Compton and Tiverton 
and prevent supplies being shipped to the American cami> 
on Tiverton Heights. 

As might be expected these opposing forces came in con- 
tact from time to time with amusing, or lively, or sometimes 
fatal consequences. 

In January. 1777, the farmers trained a twelve and an 
eighteen pound cannon on the British frigate Ccrehiis 
which was lying in Fogland cove, killing six men before the 
vessel could draw out of range. One Little Compton man 
was injured. 

The most annoying of the blockading vessels was the 
EingfisJier, a man-of-war of IG guns. A diligent search 



(1) John Irish settled here. The present house was built before the Revolution; 
the ancient portion, 1074, was rebuilt about thirty years ago. Bayles' History, p. 1015; 
Lot 16. ancient maps. . . 

Col. Church died from injuries received in a fall from his horse after visitmp: Mrs. 
Irish, who was his sister. 



92 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

in the sandy shore south of High hill, below Fogland, at low 
tide, will reward you with a view of her sea-picked ribs. There 
is a diversity of tradition as to how she came to be stranded 
and blown up (July 30th, 1778). One story is that on the 
arrival off Fogland of three of Count d'Estaing's frigates, 
the Kingfisher and two "galleys" were set on fire by their 
own crews. "Their shotted guns" we are told, "went off 
in all directions, and their magazines exploded to the con- 
fusion and consternation of friend and foe." ^ A more en- 
tertaining narrative is, that during a dark night our folks 
hastily threw up a little earth-work on High hill near where 
the Kingfisher lay at anchor; they dragged down some can- 
non and opened up a merry and unexpected bombardment. 
In the confusion of getting out of the way in a hurry, it is 
said that the ill-fated vessel was run aground with the 
above-mentioned finalc- 

In October, 1778, the "galley" Pigot, 200 tons, armed with 
eight twelve-pounders, blockaded the Sakonnet River. Maj. 
Silas Talbot started out from Providence in a small sloop, 
the Hawk, with two three-pounders. One dark night he 
dropped below Fogland point, secured reinforcements to his 
crew from Topham's regiment at Little Compton, and with 
a sudden surprise and hurrah captured the British vessel 
without the loss of a man on either side.-^ 

Meanwhile the home guard was kept moving. A maraud- 
ing band of desperadoes, headed by one William Crosson, 
was sent out from Newport to wage a guerilla warfare 
upon the surrounding country. They raided through the 
Island over Swansea Neck and into Fall River. They made 
several midnight boat sorties against our Little Compton 
farms. The depredations of Crosson's band became noto- 
rious, and measures taken to apprehend him were fruitless 
until Little Compton men took the matter into their hands. 
A curious boat, which they called a "shaving mill," was 
fitted out at Sakonnet Point, and in it a party of men un- 
der Lemuel Bailey effected Crosson's capture. He was 

(') Bayles' History of Newport County, pp. 380 and 906. 
(2) Fragmentary Sketches, etc., P. F. Little, p. 9. 

(») Arnold's Historj- of Rhode Island, Vol. II, p, 432. Bayles' History of New 
port County p. 389 and p. 906. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 98 

taken under a strong guard to Providence where he nar- 
rowly escaped the wrath of the populace. ^ 

Among the reckless associates of Crosson was one Goulds- 
borough. One night in July, 1779, he landed a party at 
Sakonuet Cove, surprised the two sons of Judge Taggart, 
who were doing sentry duty, bayoneted one of them in cold 
blood and took the brother and his father prisoners to New- 
port. The thrilling story of the subsequent escape of the 
surviving brother, in company with Capt. Benjamin Borden 
of Fall River, is told in William Taggart's Memoirs, in a 
rare and quaint book long out of print. ^ 

The story of the Taggarts perhaps merits more than pass- 
ing mention, for it leads to local liistorical discussion of 
considerable interest, which remains to be adjusted. 

Major William Taggart, whose home was just across the 
river from Almy's Wharf, had commanded a flotilla of gun- 
boats under General Sullivan, the American commander, 
and thereby incurred the enmity of the British. ^ When Sul- 
Hvan's troops retreated from the island, the British burned 
Taggart's house. In recognition of his services we find the 
General Assembly ordered that the land deeded to Gideon 
Sisson by Thomas Church, still in possession of the latter, 
be set apart for Taggart's use."* Col. William Richmond was 
appointed to hold the land for him. This was the great Sa- 
konnet Point farm, including the 242 acres between Long 
Pond, the road by the Sisson house and the sea, which land 
had descended directly to Thomas Church from his famous 
ancestor. 

Gideon Sisson, who Avas no relative of Lemuel, from 
whom our Methodist neighbors spring, was a Newport 
Tory; and, he having been adjudged a traitor, his lands, 
here and elsewhere, were confiscated. 



(1) History of Rhode Island, Rev. Edward Peterson, New York, 1S53, p. 222. 

O Memoirs of William Taggart— Cynthia Taggart's Poems, p. xxxv; also Cow- 
ell's Spirit of '76, p. 321. 

(-') Bayles' History, p. 1001. 

{*) Rhode Island Colonial Records, Vol. 8, p. 323. 



■94 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

Mr. Blake, in Bayles' history, locates the occurrence at 
the Bailey cottage on Mrs. Kempton's property, ^ and in the 
recent voluminous history of Rhode Island by Mr. Edward 
Field this is accepted as correct, a picture of the house in- 
serted, and the tragedy rehearsed in all its harrowing de- 
tails. - 

The Palmer and Bailey descendants repudiate the asser- 
tion that the peaceful homestead, — forever hallowed as the 
favored resort of the author of the hymn, "My Faith Looks 
Up to Thee," ever suffered this tragic baptism of blood. ^ I 
think the family are correct and the historians in error. It 
appears certain that it was the adjoining (Sisson) farm 
that was appropriated to Taggart's use, and it would seem 
probable from all the facts of the narrative that the cruel 
occuri'ence took place there.* 

In passing, it is interesting to note that Gideon Sisson's 
lands were restored to him after the war ; Taggart was rein- 
stated at Newport and was one of a committee of four to re- 
ceive General Washington there in 1781." 

The ploughshare of history turns up the story of the Tag- 
garts again in the next century in a peaceful but no less pa- 
thetic narrative. The surviving brother was discovered 
iSfty years later, in 1832, by the Rev. James Cook Rich- 
mond, father of our neighbor, Rev. William Richmond, suf- 
fering the extremities of poverty and old age in his home 
at Taggart's Ferry, which place, by the way, took its name 
from a cousin of the veteran. The old man's daughter Cyn- 
thia, when Mr. Richmond found them, had lain bed-ridden 
for eleven years with paralysis, composing meanwhile, a 



(') Bayles' History of Newport County, p. 1002. 

(») State of Rhode Island at the End of the Century, Edward Field, Vol. Ill, p. 
638. 

(^) Rev. Ray Palmer was bom in the old cottage on George T. Howard's farm ; li 
lived, while a boy, at the Common, in the house which is now the residence of 
JTathauiel Church. 

(*) After the above was written the writer procured Mr. P. F. Little's pamphlet, 
*' Fragmentary Sketches," etc., in which this scene is conclusively located on Col. 
Sisson's farm. 

(«) CowcU's Spirit of '76. p. 226. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 95 

perhaps superabundance of verses, dolefully religious, in 
consonance with her unfortunate condition and the atmos- 
phere of her environment. 

The Eev. James Cook Richmond made her and her verses 
the subject of a little book entitled, "The Rhode Island Cot- 
tage or a Gift for the Children of Sorrow" (1835). This 
book went through a second edition in 1842 and a third in 
1851. I was fortunate in rescuing copies of the earlier 
editions from the bottom of a basket of old books on the 
sidewalk of the bookstore at the Old South Church in Bos- 
ton. 

With the assistance of the daughters of the Hon. John 
Jay, Mr. Richmond had this good lady's poems published, ^ 
and he was further influential in raising money which 
placed the Taggarts beyond the pangs of want and secured 
the tardy recognition of a pension, — which began to be paid, 
as pensions too frequently are, on the eve of the old man's 
removal from the scenes of earthly tribulation. 

For fourteen months after July, 1778, the pent-up |)atri- 
ots on the island kept up an underground communication 
with the outside world through Little Compton, and the 
American officers were constantly apprised of the move- 
ments of the enemy. This was managed by Isaac Barker, 
a Middletown farmer, at one end, and at the other Lieuten- 
ant Chapin of Sherburne's Regiment, who was stationed at 
Little Compton and quartered, I am told, in the Amasa 
Gray house. ^ Great adroitness was required on the part 
of Barker, as he was, during the whole time, the unwilling 
host of British soldiers from whom probably he acquired 
the greater part of the information which he transmitted. 

When the people in Newport desired to send a communi- 
cation to the main-land, a certain pair of bars were left 
down, or placed standing against the wall, or Mr. Peleg 
Peckham's barn door was left open,— all in accord with a 
prearranged system. Then after nightfall a paper was to 
be found in a certain place on the Compton shore; a small 



(') Cynthia Taggart's Poems, Providence, 1834. 

(-) The house of Samuel Gray previously rasntionad. 



96 Bl-CENTENNIAL CELBBRATION OF THE UNITED 

vault covered with a flat stone, on the Middletown shore 
served as the depository for messages at that end.^ 

These facts have also been handed down in the family tra- 
ditions of the household of our neighbor, Mrs. Sidney K. 
Burleigh. Her great-grandfather, William Wilkinson, who 
was a sergeant in Colonel Archibald Crary's Providence 
Regiment and that officer's secretary, was stationed for one 
winter at Little Compton. He found his duties were not 
very burdensome and he employed himself evenings in read- 
ing to your entertaining grandmothers. He was wont to 
narrate to his grandchildren stories of frequent nightly ad- 
ventures when he had procured these mysterious papers 
and hurriedly ridden with them to his superior officers. 

It is said that the despatches which in this manner 
brought to the island the inspiring news of Burgoyne's sur- 
render, two days before its official announcement, are still 
in the possession of the Barker family. 

The Lieutenant Chapin referred to, at one time during 
his stay in this town, took a whaleboat manned by six Lit- 
tle Compton men out from Sakonnet Cove and captured a 
British brig bound for New York, which was probably be- 
calmed off the point. His prisoners, including the wife of 
Sir Guy Johnson, were brought to Little Compton. 

Benoni Simmons, who lies buried here, was a sailor dur- 
ing the Revolution. A British cannon-ball carried away his 
right arm. He was a seaman on the Alliance^ the vessel 
which took Lafayette to France in 1781. He used to tell 
how the famous general asked and was granted permission 
to take charge of the quarter-deck guns when a British man- 
of-war hove in sight — and how he valiantly kept the deck 
"whence all but him had fled."^ 

Cushing Richmond who was born in Little Compton died 
at the age of fourteen years, a prisoner on board the Jersey 
prison-ship New York — old Thomas Bailey and two others 
were seized on our bathing-beach and imprisoned on the 
same vessel — George William Curtis wrote a sonnet upon 
the pathetic fate of "the Rhode Island prisoner" on this 
dreadful vessel.^ 



(•) History of Rhode Island, Rev. Edward Peterson, New York, 1853, p. 220. 
(-) P. F. Little's Fragmentary Sketches, p. 5. 
(=) Richmond Family, p. 191. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITXLE COMPTON. 97 

AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 

Independence secured, our town was still in the advance 
guard of enlightened political movement. Rhode Island 
hesitated to enter the constitutional compact, wavered and 
fell on the wrong side, 2,708 voting against and 237 in favor 
of, ratifying the federal constitution. 

The Union was formed without this colony, she joining, 
as you know, after the government was inaugurated. Had 
Little Compton had her way in the matter Rhode Island 
would have been in with the other states, for her vote was 
G3 to 57 in favor of ratification. Bristol w as the only other 
town in the state which favored the compact which we now 
call the charter of our liberties. ^ 

During the War of 1812, the stirring episodes of the 
blockade were re-enacted. 

The most aggravating of the English vessels which har- 
rassed our shore and waylaid the boatmen on the river was 
the sloop Nimrod. Many were the fireside stories told of 
her and her ciev,-. - The following has been taken from the 
Newport Mercury of June 26th, 1813: 

"On Friday last a Launch and Barge from the brig Nim- 
rod with about 40 men, chased on shore about one mile 
south of Fogland-ferry in the east passage a sloop belong- 
ing to Nantucket from New York, with a cargo of flour and 
corn. The crew left the sloop, when she was immediately 
taken possession of by the British and set on fire. The mili- 
tia in the neighborhood assembled as soon as possible, and 
from behind a stone wall near the edge of the bank, com- 
menced firing upon the British, and soon compelled them 
to quit the sloop, with the loss of two men. The fire was 
immediately extinguished and the sloop was got off and 
carried further up the river. The enemy had possession of 
the sloop for so short a time, that neither the vessel or cargo 
were materially injured. 

Several 12-pound shot were picked up on the shore and In 
the bank and fields, which was fired from the launch. The 

(1) Records of Colony of Rhode Island, Vol. X., pp. 271, 275. 

(2) P. F. Little's " Fragmentary Sketches," p. 20. 



98 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

spirited conduct of the militia of Little Compton is enti- 
tled to the highest praise. We are gratified in saying that 
no injury was sustained." 

I have intruded upon these exercises too long to dilate 
upon the first century of prosperitj- under American inde- 
pendence, although I would gladly dwell upon scenes and 
anecdotes which have been imparted to me by my indulgent 
neighbors. 

OLD-TIME CHURCH SERVICES. 

This community is unusually fortunate in possessing an 
imperishable picture of its social life during the first half of 
the last century in the printed record of the exercises at the 
anniversary twenty-five years ago: the addresses of Rev. 
Mr. Hart, fervid with the enthusiasm of the pastor whose 
heart is his people's; of Rev. Ray Palmer, the poet, glowing 
with memories of the childhood's home; of Professor 
Charles U. Shepard, the scholar glowing with the inspira- 
tion of a son who adored his father's memory, and spar- 
kling with the humor of the gifted litterateur. 

How vividly, how tenderly, how cleverly is the old meet- 
ing-house, and the long and formal services therein con- 
ducted, described, in order that the memory of them might 
be preserved for coming generations! The one-story, 
weather-beaten, barn-shaped building, so often glorified as 
with Pentecostal light; the Sabbath worshippers quietly 
assembling for service, in best broadcloth or rustling silk, 
or humble gray; some on horseback, some in chaises, some 
walking along the blossoming byways or across the distant 
fields; the pillioned horses depositing in turn their fair 
and coquettish burdens at the church door; the imposing 
appearance of Deacon Brownell's coach, — the only two- 
horse vehicle in the town ; the pausing, if it were winter, at 
the great stove in the entry-way to fill the footstoves for the 
comfort of the nether members, while doctrinal theology 
and spiritual inspiration were supposed to keep the bodies 
of the hearers aglow. Then the decorous entrance of the 
women into the high-backed, balustraded pews; the hush 
attending the arrival of the silk-gowned clergyman, accom- 



^L 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 99 

panied by Dame Shepard, and followed by their numerous 
progeny, walking in subdued procession. The rising of the 
minister in the ])ulpit, which was the signal for the men to 
cease their door-yard contention concerning fish, crops, or 
politics and to take their places for worship, followed 
by the tramping of the men down the aisle and up the gal- 
lery stairs; the shutting to of the big pew-doors, and the 
general settling down to the quiet of the two hours' ser- 
vice. Professor Shepard narrates that there was a momen- 
tary stay in the i)roceedings occasioned by a large and aged 
man's solemnly mounting the pulpit steps. This gentle- 
man was Mr. John Gray, whose infirmity of deafness en- 
dowed liim with the exceptional privilege of standing, all 
through the service, at the minister's side with a great, 
brazen ear-trumpet held in close proximity to the preach- 
er's face. How prosaic and commonplace compared with 
such an arrangement are the modern tubes and telephones 
wdiich mechanically connect the pews with the pulpit! 

Then it was customary that there should be another de- 
lay, for Mistress Margaret Lynn was an important func- 
tionary and must not be lost sight of. She was the sexton, 
and of her it was sometimes whispered tJiat she cleaned the 
various pews with an assiduity proportioned to the owner's 
liberality ; and the ear-trumpet and the morning's text must 
needs be suspended while she rustled down the aisle and dis- 
posed her ample petticoats in the straightened confines of 
her pew beside the pulpit. 

After another brief, impressive silence there came the 
lining out of the hymns, each couplet being read by the pas- 
tor and sung by the congregation,— an alternation of song 
and speech which must have been jolting to the melody of 
the hymn. In early days the congregation were kept some- 
where near the key by the twang of chorister John Taylor's 
tuning-fork, and in later days by the note of a violoncello, 
which time-honored instrument may be seen, in perfect con- 
dition, in our Historical Exhibit. 

The lengthy sermon was not interrupted, but varied 
merely, by the occasional promenade up and down the aisle 
of Deacon Tompkins ; he was a short, fat man, whose par- 



100 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

tial paralysis precluded his staying long in a set position 
and therefore this peripetetic license was accorded for the 
amelioration of his distress. I fancy there are some here 
before me, who, while they covet no such infirmity are never- 
theless envious of so acceptable a privilege. 

To my mind the descriptions, such as that of the Sabbath 
service, the gathering after service at the parsonage, the 
polishing of the above-mentioned ear-trumpet, and other oc- 
currences of parish experience, found in Professor Shep- 
ard's letter are of a literary value akin to the pictures of 
colonial life in Hawthorne's famous tales. Selections from 
this letter v/ould make entertaining reading for us at the 
winter fireside, or at church festivals or school entertain- 
ments. Such readings would be far from tiresome and 
would tend to renew the traditions of old days. 

If time permitted there are stories that might be told 
of Dorr's Rebellion and of the years of peace and prosperity 
previous to the breaking out of the Civil War. During the 
latter period the Common presented almost its present ap- 
pearance, except that the houses looked newer and better 
kept, and the village bore a front of greater vigor and pros- 
perity. There was an inn for the accommodation of the 
travelers who were brought into town by the two lines of 
Concord stages, whose appearance from New Bedford and 
Fall River constituted the most notable break in the quiet of j 
the day. And then the busy windmill across the road south 
of the cemetery added liveliness to the scene. 

Little Comptou was the birthplace of one United States 
senator. James Freeman Simmons first saw the light in 
the old farmhouse now owned by Rouse Pearce. One gov- 
ernor of Rhode Island was born and lived here, — Governor 
Isaac Wilbour. ' 

Probably most of 3'ou are familiar with the large paint- 
ing in Mr. Wilbour's parlor. It is indeed a treasure in 
which the whole town may have pride. Mr. Blashfield, the 
artist, is one of the great men of his time, and his work in 
many capitols will help to save the memory of statesmen 
and soldiers from oblivion. It speaks well for his taste 
and discernment that, in the gardens of Italy and on the 




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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 101 

waters of old Nile, he wooed and won a woman of Little 
Compton ancestry. Side by side, man and wife have la- 
bored in the fields of literature and art. Their edition of 
''Vasari's Lives of the Painters," and their books on "The 
Italian Cities" have become classics. Mrs. Blashfield's own 
literary work in lighter vein, such as Masques of Cupid, 
and numerous magazine articles have started a new growth 
of laurels upon the governor's family tree. 

The painting to which I have referred is a life-size pre- 
sentment of three white-headed and snowy-bearded old gen- 
tlemen engaged in the deliberation of a matter which is in- 
dicated upon the document spread before them, the map of 
the Little Compton "Gret" road,— a subject which cannot 
fail to arouse our local sympathy. The old men are Isaac 
C. Wilbour, Charles Edwin Wilbour and Isaac Wilbour 
Brownell. Looking into space from a framed portrait be- 
hind them appears the face of a beardless young man, who 
is clad in the straight-cut brown coat and folded neck-cloth 
of a century ago. The j^outhful figure represents Governor 
Isaac Wilbour. There is fine humor in the title of the 
painting "The Governor's Grandsons." Governor Wilbour 
entered public life when he entered manhood. He was rep- 
resentative from this town, and became speaker of the As- 
sembly. He was twice lieutenant-governor and succeeded 
to the governorship on the death of Governor Mumford. At 
the expiration of his term of ofiice he was elected to Con- 
gress. Subsequently, for eight years, he Avas chief justice 
of Rhode Island. 

The following anecdote, which is too good to be lost, al- 
though well authenticated, has, I believe, never been pub- 
lished. 

The time is after the Revolution and before the War of 
1812. The scene, Tiverton Four Corners, a great concourse 
of people filling the roadway between the two country 
stores— the "red store" and the "white store." Conspicu- 
ous in the throng is a handsome young man of distinguished 
bearing, a ruffled front and snowy stock surmounting his 
straight-cut frock coat, his abundant hair wrapped and tied 
in a queue. 



102 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

Attended by a couple of officers in uniform, supported by 
an officious sheriff and a constable, it is evident that the 
young man is a person of authority. 

The centre of all the hubbub is a terrified woman bound 
to an upright stone post. The occasion of it all is that 
Governor Wilbour is about to attend the painful execution 
of the sentence of the Court that, for some misdemeanor, 
the woman shall be flogged. The women of the town are 
surging around his Excellency agitating a violent protest 
against the proposed indignity to one of ''the sex." 

The governor, compelling silence in a few temperate 
words, upholds the supremacy of law and expounds the ex- 
ecutive duty, — receiving an insurbodinate wail in response 
from an unappreciative audience. Temporizing for a mo- 
ment with rebellion, his Excellency, inquiring what the law 
says ''anyhow," reads from the pages of the Statute : *'The 
condemned prisoner shall be tied to an upright post and 
flogged according to the sentence of the Court." Another 
rebellious outcry — in soprano, followed by an expectant 
hush, during which his Excellency profilers the suggestive 
inquiry, "But ladies! If it happened that there should be 
no 'upright post,' how could the law be carried out?" 

Whereupon a hundred willing hands unite in overthrow- 
ing, not for the occasion only, but for all time, the offensive 
instrument of public castigation, and since then no woman 
has been publicly flogged in Rhode Island. 

The governor sleeps in the family burial place beside the '(' 

ivy-covered belfrey where, at rare intei'vals, the music of 
chimes may be heard answering through the sunset stillness 
the tolling of the lonely bell that rocks with the heaving of 
the neighboring sea. 

You know the place, — and the golden emblem pointing 
heavenward. It is the Egyptian sign of immortality, an- 
cient as the pentateuch, but like the Christian cross, sym- 
bolizing the desire of the ages — the life eternal. 

Near the governor's grave lie two of his ''grandsons." 
One was a traveled and learned Egyptologist, versed in 
hieroglyphic lore; the other, keeping the even tenor of his 
way at home, employed his leisure hours in the study of 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 103 

books and nature. Over his Avindow which overlooks fields 
and sea and sky is carved the legend : 

" Earth, Ocean, Air, Beloved brotherhood.*' 

Shakespeare's Orlando, in the woods of Arden, hurning 
with a less idyllic flame than his, is said to have fastened 
his romantic rhymings to the trees. Onr neighbor, his 
heart pnlsing with the love of nature, roved like a Druid 
through the woodland communing with its mysteries. 
Sometimes in your forest ramblings you may find yourself 
confronted by a hidden shrine his hand had set up — a tab- 
let, perhaps, secured to the branches of some stately oak in- 
scribed with a suggestive (quotation from Emerson or Tho- 
reau. 

These kinsmen in their diverse wavs exemplify the truth : 

" To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Comnnmion witli her visible forms she speaks 
A various language." 

THE CIVIL WAR. 

We must also pass over the period of the Civil War in 
which Little Compton played her part, save to recall to 
those who were witnesses of the scene, the brilliant maneu- 
vers on the village Common of the Little Compton Home 
Guard, — forty rifles, George W. Staples, first lieutenant; 
James Brownell, second lieutenant; and Solomon Whitney, 
third lieutenant; Oliver Page Peckham, first orderly ser- 
geant; Frederick R. Brownell, second, and Frank Staples, 
third, with Boriah Brigham, Isaac Brownell and Albert 
Gray, the corporals, — and all under command of General 
Nathaniel T. Church, then prominent in state military af- 
fairs, mounted on his prancing coal-black saddle-horse and 
resplendent with sash, slioulder straps, chapeau, and flash- 
ing, gold-mounted sabre. 

Proudly the little company is marched past the reviewing 
stand at Mr. Brown's store. Squire Philip F. Little beating 
the drum, and his boy. Henry Little, now a prosperous New 
York publisher, playing the fife,— and all treading jauntily 
to the marshal air of "Lumps of Puddin' and Pieces of Pie." 



104 BI-CE3NTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

The Fall River Journal of September 28, 1861, which, 
through the courtesy of Mr. Nathaniel Church, may be read 
in our Exhibit, gives a two and a half column account of 
one of these inspiring events. It describes the distin- 
guished personages present and says: ''The Company 
looked most finely, and showed that they had been pretty 
well disciplined by their worthy Commander, Honorable 
Nathaniel Church. The 'brave sojer boys' were attired in 
neat uniform, black glazed military caps, blue jackets and 
black pants with white stripes. No military officer looked 
better or made a nobler appearance than Capt. Church. So 
we may say of the brave 'sojer' boys under command of 
Captain Church. . . . Among the privates of the com- 
pany we were pleased to notice the tall, manly form of Col. 
Oliver C. Brownell, the Representative to the General As- 
sembly. . . . While waiting to enjoy the eating of the 
smoking clams and sup the tasty plates of chowder, the 
company, under command of Major Henry T. Slsson (who 
was at the Battle of Bull's Run), went through the Zouave 
system of drill service, lying on the ground while firing 
blank cartridges, etc.,- — showing that the gallant young 
major had made some proficiency in the science of military 
tactics while fighting in defence of his country under the 
valiant Colonel Slocum." 

I regret the necessity which occasions the omission of a 
narrative of the heroic achievement of our late neighbor, to 
whom reference has just been made. Colonel Sisson was 
the hero of many brave deeds, but the action to which I es- 
pecially refer was that at "Little" Washington, N. C, where 
with a part of his command, the Fifth Rhode Island Ar- 
tillery, he rescued a whole Massachusetts regiment from 
annihilation, and thus placed his name upon the immortal 
roll of national heroes. ^ 



(') History of 5th Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, J. K.Burlingame, p. 144. 

Note : A member of the rescued 44th Massachusetts Regt., in a description of 

this exploit in the Providence Journal, June '24, J 906, writes : " It has always been a 

mystery why the exceeding gallantary of Col. Sisson in coming to our relief was 

not more widely known, for few braver deeds were done during the war. * * * 

Funston won deserved honor and fame by au action no braver or more perilous 
tlian Sisson 's. Rhode Island should be proud of such a son. " 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH Or LITTLE COMPTON. 105 

I suppose there would be a responsive rustle throughout 
this congregation if I should ask those to rise who remem- 
ber Squire Little. 

"P. F. Little, Esq., Job Printer, Deputy Sheriff and Com- 
missioner of Deeds, author of "Little's Legal Advisor," 
''Live and Let Live," "Mind Your Stops," etc., etc., manu- 
facturer of Laura Keene Hair Dye and Little's Diaphanic 
Soap. Come one, come all. Examine specimens and leave 
your orders ! I N. B. Suits in Justice Court promptly at- 
tended to.'' ^ 

His name was not mentioned this morning in Mr. Bux- 
ton's discourse, and probably that he should be eulogized 
from this pulpit years after his death vrould have been far 
from his own idea of the appropriateness of things; and yet 
so characteristic was his personality that a portrayal of 
Little Compton life during and after war times would be 
hardly complete if it failed to recall the little, white cot- 
tage that your memories will replace on the site of the 
Grange Hall, and, appropriately enough, right in the midst 
of our historical exhibit. You will remember the gaunt fig- 
ure, the black head and piercing eyes that bent over the 
printing-press from which issued the only newspapers of 
which Little Compton ever boasted: The Little Compton 
Platonic and The Village Bell. Thence, too, emanated, 
among other choice things, the following remarkable pro- 
ductions, of which he was the author, printer and pub- 
lisher: "A Sailor's Narrative of Twenty-four Voyages or 
the Adventures of Joseph J. Grinnell of Little Compton, R. 
I., giving an account of his imprisonment, his being con- 
demned to be hung and his miraculous escape." (Two 
pamphlets, 1858). 

"The Deserters— A thrilling and exciting story of the Re- 
bellion, by P. F. Little, Esq. If you begin to read this story 
you will want to finish it before laying it down. Little 
Compton, R. I., 1869." 

"The Belle of Pocasset. A Romantic Wedding or Marry- 
ing with Vengeance, in connection with a Business Card 
Directory" (1873). 

(>) Copy of one of Mr. Little's business cards. 



106 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

"The Yankee Privateer Antelope of the Narragansett. A 
thrilling story of the Last War on Land and Sea, by P. F. 
Little, author of a Sailor's Narrative; Live and Let Live; 
The Legal Adviser; The Adopted Daughter; Deserters, etc., 
etc., Little Compton, R. I., 1876." 

"Fragmentary Sketches and Incidents in Little Compton 
and Tiverton during the Revolution and the War of 1812, 
By P. F. Little, Esq. Never before published, 1880." 

During the War with Spain the spirit of '76 in this vil- 
lage was revived. The government established a signal- 
station at Sakonnet Point and Colonel Sisson's son, Henry, 
drilled a company of volunteers at the town hall. Old guns 
were taken down from their resting places over family 
hearthstones, or hunted up in corners and in garrets. A 
motley collection they made. — flint-locks, hammer-locks and 
breech-loaders, — smooth bores, rifles, muskets and shot 
guns, "better or worse, richer or poorer," ready for service 
at the country's call. 

Very recently the Quaker service has become one of the in- 
stitutions of the town known only to memory through the 
ancient meeting-house on Brimstone Hill, which remains 
a relic of past days. I hope something may be done 
for its preservation. This house was built in 1815 
though I imagine some of the interior fittings survived from 
the earlier building. How quaint the}^ are, — the wooden 
partition, with swinging door and windov/. which may be 
lowered by ropes, like a theatrical scene, to separate the men 
from the women worshippers ; the elders' pew at the end, the 
little gallery that one may reach from below, and the plain 
board benches, smoothed and polished by generations of 
prayerful sitters. And, then, how pathetic, — those lonely 
services. Sabbath after Sabbath, year after year, of the last 
survivor of his sect, — the silvery head bowed in solitary 
prayer and silent communion with the past. 

I have mentioned only a few of the people whose lives 
have enriched the memories of this place and shown that 
"peace hath her victories" as well as war. I wish there 
could be recorded memorials of them all. Fortunately 
sketches of many of our neighbors and their families have 




George S. Burleigh 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 107 

been published in the History of Newport County, to which 
I have made frequent reference. 

One of the endearing memories we shall all of us carry 
through life is that of the village poet. He looked, he lived, 
the part — he did not affect it— for his life was spontaneous 
and beautiful as the blossoms that embowered his home. 
His patriarchal presence, his illumined face with silvery 
wealth of flowing hair, when encountered on some wooded 
byway brought Camelot to mind and bards who sang of 
chivalry. An acquaintance with Mr. Burleigh was a bene- 
diction to be remembered all one's days. Though he was 
absent during the winter, this was his home. His wife was 
a Little Compton girl, and the inspiration of his life and 
his poetry germinated and bloomed under the influence of 
the woods, the air, the ocean, the life and the love that 
environed his seaside home. 

Mr. Burleigh's literary labors v.ere largely devoted to 
magazine productions and editorial work. The publica- 
tions of his own which have been left to us are : Anti- 
Slavery Hymns, 1842 ; The Maniac and other ])oems, 1849 ; 
Signal Fires, 185G ; and a translation into English verse of 
Victor Hugo's La Legende des Siecles, 1867. 

It was he who composed the verse graven upon the Eliza- 
beth Alden monument. 

We should be familiar with his description of "A Storm 
on Saugonnet."^ 

" Then came the storm with its signal drum, 
All night we iieard on the eastern shore 
The ste.3dy booming and muffled roar 
Of the great waves' tramp ere the winds had come! 
***** 

" With the measured march of a miglity host 

The ground-swell came, with wave upon wave, 
On the red Saugonnet rocks they drave. 
And scattered their foam over leagues of coast. 

***** 

"Spectral and dim over sunk Cutty wow 

Tlie White spray hung, but we heard no shock, 
For the liquid thunder on red Wall Rock 
Crushed out all sound with its deafening blow. 



(>) In " Poems of Places." H W. Longfellow, Ed. Boston. 



108 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

" In the swirl of the Hopper the waves were ground 
To impalpable dust; the Ridge Rock roared 
To the crash of a new Niagara poured 
Right up the crags with a slippery bound! 

- " Over Brenton's Reef where tlie west hung black, 
O'er tlie cloudy bar of the Cormorant Rocks, 
The white seas hurried in huddling flocks 
With the wolf-winds howling along their track." 

And now closing let us recall his words, freighted with 
the love of Nature and the supremacy of faith : 

" Not yet, not yet, O darling mine! 
O ISIotlier Nature, call me not today, 
With wood and wave and beautiful sunshine. 
And all thy fresh Divine, — 
For heavy shadows on my spirit weigh. 



"I turn me from thee. Mother Mild, 
Into the heavens of Thought, and spirit's Faith; 
There, great and calm, with Godhood over-smiled 
Loving and undefiled — 
I see the dead victorious over death." 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 109 



THE HISTORICAL EXHIBIT. 



The Historical Exhibit in the Grange Hall was an 
afterthought. But it was a happy one. The possibility of 
gathering together at this anniversary all the family heir- 
looms and other treasures of the neighborhood was alluring. 
Mrs. Forbes W. Manchester, Mrs. Roswell B. Burchard and 
Mrs. Lysander W. Manchester constituted themselves a 
volunteer committee. Wagons were hurried from house to 
house and everybody lent a willing hand in bringing out 
living-room fixtures that had remained undisturbed for 
generations and in ransacking garrets for household uten- 
sils whose ancient use offered occasion for modern discus- 
sion. Nothing was imported from beyond Windmill Hill 
or Westport except some souvenirs of the old-time ministers. 
China and other breakables were of necessity leTt behind. 
So hurried were the preparations that many desirable things 
were overlooked, but take it all together the results were 
of surprising interest. 

And what tender recollections these homely objects 
aroused in the older people! What anecdotes they in- 
spired, and what a revelation of old days they presented to 
the young ! 

A day spent among these ^'exhibits" with such a descrip- 
tive book as Alice Morse Earle's "Home Life in Colonial 
Days" offered an opportunity for rare entertainment. 

Here was an old-fashioned loom with all its accessories 
in operation, Mrs. Andrew W. Lawton throwing the shuttle 
with practiced hand. There was a great wool-wheel with 
Mrs. Ralph Wilcox or Mrs. Elva A. Humphrey spinning 
merrily, while Mrs. John A. Seabury supplied the necessary 
"wool-rolls" which had lain forgotten for years under her 
attic eaves. Here again was a flax-wheel with all its ac- 



110 BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 

companying outfit of brake, swingling-knife, hetchels, clock- 
reel, etc. 

This antique machinery bore witness to the labor and 
the skill that was employed in the making of each of the 
hundreds of specimens of homespun fabric that were un- 
folded that day. 

The walls of the hall v\^ere draped with a unique 
collection of those famous old-time blue and white, or brown 
and white bed coverlets, showing all the well-known de- 
signs and some of the curious ones which one may find 
pictured in Mrs. Earle's book. 

There was a fine exhibit of samplers bearing familiar 
names; and embroidered pictures: — Paul in a top hat and 
Virginia in silk negligee and hair ribbons; young women 
pondering over funeral tablets beneath weeping willows; 
family trees and memorial records done in silk and water- 
color. 

There was a collection of costumes and needlework and 
everything in homespun from doylies to frock coats. There 
were the christening and wedding gowns of the grand- 
mothers and the swallow-tails and waistcoats and uniforms 
of the forefathers. There were calashes and pumpkin hoods 
and slat bonnets, with chapeaus and stove-pipe hats near | 
at hand as of old. And, then, there were cradles of every 
description, a trundle-bed, baby-tenders and toy furniture. . 
There were the saddle and pillion upon which some village 
bell rode to church, the foot stove which kept her warm 
while there; the poke-bonnet, gown and slippers, and, in 
a secluded corner, the beautifully wrought stays that she 
wore. Theie, too, were the hymnbook from which she sang 
and the violoncello which accompanied her voice; the com- 
munion cups of 1711 and 1741 from which she received the 
Sacrament, the manuscript of the lengthy sermon and the 
spectacles through which its illuminating passages were 
read. 

Pewter and brass glittered in one corner while another 
was somber with the rust of ancient fire-arms. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. HI 

The sterner life of the fathers was recalled by a collection 
of Indian relies, a Colonial helmet, guns, pistols and side 
arms, a "blunderbuss" and a true sword of Bunker Hill. 

The followiug catalogue, necessarily incomplete, is given 
with the hope that the location of these relics may be re- 
membered, and that at some future day they may be again 
gathered together. Each exhibitor vv^as given a card to 
identify the exhibit and it is desirable that these should 
be preserved. 

The bare list of these articles may seem commonplace 
enough, when described separately, however, many would 
prove of surpassing interest. Thus, "an invitation to a 
dance written on the eight of hearts" seems worthy of con- 
sideration when one reads in Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne" 
(Vol. II, page 127) that the hero received many invitations 
and said : "It may amuse those for whom I write to know 
that nearly all were writ on the white backs of playing 
cards." One surmises that the old clock-reel could tell 
tales when he hums the Colonial refrain : 

"And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked." 

The spoon moulds are worth looking at when one is 
told that most New England communities possessed but 
one pair of them, and that they were passed round to make 
pewter spoons for the whole neighborhood; and so he sees 
something in the pipe-tongs, when he finds, in Mrs. Earle's 
book, the picture of a pair just like those herein catalogued 
and reads that it is a rare specimen. In fact many of these 
articles are pictured in that interesting volume and among 
them the following: Flint-wheel, Betty lamps. Colonial 
bottles, bed coverlets, calashes and other bonnets, band- 
boxes, spoon-moulds, candle-moulds, waffle-irons, skillets, 
pot-hooks, griddles and other hearth-stone utensils, spinning- 
wheels, clock-reels, swifts, quill-wheels, loom-temples, tape 
looms, wool cards, hetchels, etc. 



112 



BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED 



CATALOGUE OF THE HISTORICAL EXHIBIT. 



Committee : 



Mrs. Forbes W. Manchester, Mrs. Roswell B. Burchard, 
and Mrs. Lysander W. Manchester. 

Loaned ty : 

The United Congregational Society op Little Compton: 
A silver communion cup inscribed, given by J. Church, 
Esq., to y** church of Christ in little Compton on 1 d. 
1 m. 1711. 

Another cup, companion to the above, with the in- 
scription: Given b}'^ Tho^ Baley to y*^ church of Christ 
in Little Compton, June y® first 1741. 

Mrs. S. R. Allen : Candle moulds. 

Miss Vesta Almy: 2 bedspreads; bonnet, 3 embroidered 
collars; pair spectacles; beaded bag; Newport Mercury, 
1760. 

Erastus S. Bailey : Runlet of Ebenezer Church, 200 years 
old ; weighing measure ; 2 communion cups. 

Mrs. Sarah F. Borden : 2 mahogany chairs ; 2 documents, 
1764; gravy boat, cover and platter; 2 cut glass bottles 
and stoppers ; tea caddy ; basket ; platter. 

Mrs. George H. Brayton : 16 arrow heads ; 2 antique knives 
and forks; butcher knife; bottle; 6 dresses of various 
periods ; petticoat. Homespun fabrics : Apron ; baby 
blankets; 7 towels, plain and striped; 2 silk scarfs; 3 
caps; 9 handkerchiefs; table-cloth; 2 skirts; 4 shawls; 
hat. 

Mrs. Thomas Brayton : Loaner's wedding-dress, 1862 ; Mr. 
Brayton's wedding waistcoat ; straw bonnet worn when 
loaner was a child; very large bandbox; burningfluid 
lamp. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 113 

Loaned by : 

Mrs. Mary N. Briggs: Pewter lamp; embroidered needle 
book belonged to Margaret Hussey of Nantucket ; minia- 
ture buffet made by Samuel Nye of Wareham, 1810, for 
Delia Nye; three legged table; wooden spoon. 

Mrs. William H. Briggs: Piggin; 2 spools of linen; dress; 
silver spoon ; spoon, 1750. 

Mrs. Thomas Briggs: Blue and brown woven bedspread 
of Diana Briggs made into portieres; 2 pewter ladles; 
war club, from Sandwich Islands, given Jeremiah 
Briggs; pitcher; cup; Holy Bible; marriage certificate, 
Gray and Church ; tablespoon, 100 years old ; teaspoon ; 
Indian beaded cushion; pottery jug; glass jug; glass 
cruet; stone jug; vase of Mrs. Capt. Seabury, 100 years 
old. 

E. C. Brownell : Cup and saucer. 

Mrs. Richmond Brownell: 2 chairs; snuffbox. 

F. R. Brownell : 2 commissions of Sylvester Brownell, the 

loaner's great-grandfather, signed by Sam. Adams and 
John Hancock. 

Pardon C. Brownell : Pair brass candlesticks. 

Mrs. Emma Buckley : Pair English wooden clogs, worn by 
a child; teapot; cup and saucer. 

Mrs. John C. G. Brown: Pewter plate; copper lustre 
pitcher, belonged to loaner's grandmother; linen home- 
spun handkerchief; China mustard pot; tureen; old 
Dresden cup. 

Mrs. Roswbll B. Burchard: Embroidered picture, Paul 
and Virginia, by Mary Simmons; embroidered picture, 
Tombstone, by Prudence Simnjons; 5 blue and white 
coverlets; white spread, homespun linen; black and 
white striped blanket of homespun woolen; 3 glass 
bottles ; silver snuffers on tray. Prudence Church ; pipe- 
tongs, wrought-iron, belonged to loaner's great-great- 
grandfather; pipe box; glass jar with lion on top; blue 
and white china platter; foot-stove; embroidered map 
of England, done in 1809 ; picture painted on velvet ; 3 



114 BI-CBNTBNNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Loaned hy: 

pairs brass andirons; tall brass pendant lamp; bronze 
lamp; 17 silver spoons; 2 hair-cloth cylinder trunks; 
cradle; wooden candlestick; brass candlestick; candle 
moulds; lantern; pewter tray; pewter lamp; 5 pewter 
porringers; pewter basin; teapot, sugar bowl and 
cream; pitcher, Liverpool-ware; mahogany table; 
bureau ; washstand ; workstand ; work table ; shaving 
glass; vases; lantern; clock; bowl; pitcher; jug; 
John Church's sled ; "thousand legged" mahogany table ; 
piece of Mary Helen's wedding dress; homespun bed- 
quilt and sheets ; green spectacles ; lava inkstand ; 
scriber for marking lumber ; wig block ; wool wheel ; 
swifts ; knot reel ; hetchels. 

Mrs. Sydney R. Burleigh : Home made shears ; Colonial 
blunderbuss; sword worn at Bunker Hill; calash; P. 
F. Little's books : "The Deserter," "Belle of Pocasset," 
"Yankee Privateer," "Antelope of the Narragansett," 
"Comptonian Platonic;" 3 books written by George S. 
Burleigh: "Signal Fires," "The Maniac," "Legend of 
the Centuries." 

Miss Mary S. Burlingame: 2 glass candlesticks; 2 brass 
candlesticks; blue and white bedspread; spyglass, be- 
longed to Oliver Brownell. 

Mrs. Emily J. Butler: Brass spoon-mould, for making 
pewter spoons; plate; cider mug. 

Thomas F. Caer : Horse pistol ; Queen's-arm gun ; flintlock 
musket, 1798; tallow lamp. 

Mrs, William L. Cassard : Applique and patchwork calico 
quilt. 

Mrs. Nathaniel Church: Almanac; Watts' hymns; 
needlework; coat, belt, sword, sash, spurs, hat, which 
belonged to Gen. Nathaniel Church; baby tender; ivory 
knife with Indian design; Fall River Journal. 

George W. Church : Marriage certificate written by Rev. 
Mase Shepard; poetry on house that stood where Old- 
acre Cottage stands; flint and steel. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 115 

Loaned "by : 

Mrs. Edgar F. Clark : Stone mould for making buckles ; 3 
fossil stones; book, '^Confession of Faith." 

Mrs. Richard B. Com stock : Embroidered mull collar. 

Mrs. James W. Coombs : Blue and white woven bedspread. 

Miss Ethel Drowne : 2 cradles that belonged to Valentine 
Simmons. 

Mrs. Addie L. M. Davis: Wooden plate, 125 years old; 
coat; mallet and mahogany chisel, used in olden times 
to cut loaf sugar which came in shape of a haystack and 
was broken off as needed ; blue, white and black coverlet, 
18th century. 

Mrs. George M. Gray: Mirror, with painted glass picture 
in upper section of frame 110 years old, belonged to 
Miranda White; mahogany chair. 

James L. Gray: Violoncello. 

Mrs. George A. Gray: Corner chair; silhouette of Betsey 
Briggs, teacher in L. C. in early part of 18th century; 
hand-made pins; silver scissors; embroidered pocket- 
book; spoon, supposed to have been "Betty" Alden's; 2 
forks; 2 knives; 5 pieces of Continental money; letter 
of Marque to Samuel Briggs,i by William Greene, 1779; 
letter of Sam'l Briggs to his wife, 1779 ; instructions to 
privateers, signed by William Greene, 1779; David 
Durfee, Jr.'s, letter; history of the Quakers; skein of 
flax. 

Samuel B. Gray : Coat and military sash worn by Amasa 
Gray in the militia in 1825 ; 3 gold ornaments ; revenue 
tax bill. 

Mrs. Abbib Grinnbll: Old clock; white neckerchief of 
Nancy Grinnell; feather flowers. 

Mrs. Emma M. Grinnell: Ancient Bible; pair wooden 
candlesticks; 2 runlets. 

Thomas D. Grinnell: Family record; sword; cutlass; 
candlesticks; sermons, 1812; 2 arrowheads; 2 flintlock 
pistols and 3 flints. 



116 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Loaned iy : 

Mrs. Henry A. Groth : Pair brass candlesticks ; homespun 
linen sheet ; mortar and pestle ; 2 pewter plates ; book of 
early R. I. laws; 15 coins; Pamelia Burgess' spoon, over 
200 years old ; wooden pitchfork. 

John Sbabury Hathaway : Homespun linen tablecloth of 
great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Coggeshall Man- 
chester. 

John Hoxie: Flint-lock pistol; 2 Indian war-clubs; gun. 

Asa R. Howland: Pewter plate; oak spindle-back arm- 
chair; rush bottom armchair; cotton stockings and cap. 

Mrs. Edward L. Hunt: Pewter teapot; yellow silk waist; 
drab and purple silk gown; gown. 

Mrs. Elva A. Humphrey: 2 coins, 1787, 1788; wooden 
plate; pewter plate; 5 children's primers; Rev. Ray 
Palmer's candlesticks. 

Mrs. John H. Jewell: Silver spoon, 250 years old; silver 
spoon; account of ordination of Rev. Mase Shepard in 
1787; list of drafted men in Little Compton, 1863; 
Ancestor, Thomas Brownell's commissions as Ensign, 
1816, and as Lieutenant, 1817; family registry, 1789; 
memorial picture, 1809; baby chair; 2 cradles. 

Mrs. T. Warren Kempton : Wooden candlestick ; tallow 
dip; powderhorn. 

Mrs. George W. Kirb y : Pewter tumbler ; pewter plate ; 
china pepper-box. 

Mrs. Andrew Henry Lawton : Weaving loom with shut- 
tles, loom temples, wool cards, rake or comb for separat- 
ing strands of the warp, and other accessories; quill 
wheel. 

A. A. LoTHROP : Framed piece of material. 

John T. T. McKenzie: 4 military hats; haversack, round- 
about ; canteen ; military coat ; cartridge box ; knapsack. 

Abraham Manchester: Saddle and pillion. 

Mrs. Forbes W. Manchester: Wool cards; hetchels; flax- 
wheel; wool wheel; clock-wheel; swifts; swingling 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OP LITTLE COMPTON. 117 

Loaned hy: 

knife; hanging griddle; piggin; skillet; wood bowl; 
iron candlesticks ; candle box ; foot-stove ; brass handled 
tongs; antique kitchen-chair; sampler of Lydia Shaw. 

Mrs. Lysander W. Manchester: Three-cornered chair; 
200 years old; pot-hooks and trammels; brass candle- 
stick. 

Miss Flora L. Mason : Vinegar cruet of Richard Billings, 
loaned by his descendant. 

Miss Carrie E, Mayo: Little basket; little skillet; three- 
legged iron kettle. 

Mrs. Elkanah Palmer: Chair; water bucket, runlet; 4 
pictures of Prodigal Son; picture, Noah's Ark; picture, 
Byron and Marianna; 7 wicker baskets; veil and bon- 
net; 3 bonnet boxes; shoemaker's bench with 81 tools; 
cooper's adz; 11 shoemakers' lasts and 3 tops with 
them ; trundle bed ; wooden shoemakers' clamp ; tin tea- 
caddy; 2 pairs andirons, (iron) ; antique patchwork 
quilt ; bundle of tallow dip sticks ; warming pan ; small 
skillet. 

LoRiNG A. Palmer: Sewing stand; bundle of quills. 

Mrs. William Tweed Peckham : 2 antique bottles from 
Indian graves in cemetery north of the Swamp Road; 
3 Indian stone hammerheads; 7 flint arrowheads; pipe; 
flint wheel and tinder box. 

Sarah C. Peckham : Antique table. 

Charles H. Peckham : 2 family records ; 2 old cups and 
saucers, great-grandmother's wedding present. 

Miss Miranda Pierce: Blue and white crib blanket, 1787; 
flannel sheet woven by Hannah Head; white spread 
woven of first Slaterville cotton, sold in Little Comp- 
ton about 100 years ago; stays made and worn by 
Hannah Davenport about 1755; pewter candlestick; 4 
old tallow dips ; shot bowl ; powderhorn ; hank of yam ; 
shuttles made by H. Head; ancient stone bottle; tea- 
pot; Dorr War bayonet; Civil War saddlebags; book, 
"Imitation of Christ," 1802. 



118 BI-CBNTENNIAL CELEBRATION OP THE UNITED 

Loaned hy: 

Mrs. p. a. Pierce: Antique silver spoons; 2 brass candle- 
sticks; iron candlestick; wooden candlestick; patch- 
work quilt; silk shoulder shawl, 75 years old, Mary 
Woodman's; candle snuffers and tray; chair belonging 
to Nathan Slade of Swansey; mahogany table; rocking 
chair; wooden spoon; blue and white homespun linen 
square, 75 years old. Emblem Wilbour's ; doll's bonnet ; 
sampler; picture. 

Mrs. Abraham J. Potter: Ancient bitstock, the bit 
turned by twisted cords; candle-moulds. 

Mrs. Joshua B. Kichmond : Photographs of 3 Colonial 
commissions of ancestors, Sylvester and Perez ; ancient 
picture of a Providence church; sleigh-bells; waffle 
irons with very long handles. 

Mrs. Andrew Sawyer: Blue and white coverlet; coat; 
bonnet; pair spectacles; Betty lamp; bellows; pewter 
platter; silver spoons; wooden knife and fork; pair of 
pistols; powderhorn. 

Mrs. John A. Sbabury: Sampler; sampler of Lydia Coe, 
1795; sampler, Marion Grasson, 1822; picture, Gothic 
beauties; pair yellow slippers, piece of Deborah 
Church's wedding dress in which she was married to 
Adam Simmons in 1755; large wool (spinning) wheel; 
pair of cards for carding wool; antique wheel head; 
hetchels; spool rack; tow bag; spooling wheel; tape- 
loom; flax-wheel; bundle of antique wool-rools for 
spinning; iron lantern; embroidered bag; 2 antique 
glass bottles; 2 small skillets; ancient stone bottle; 
pewter tumbler; brass candlestick. 

Miss Mary K. Seabury : Brass lamp ; leather trunk of Otis 
Coggeshall ; sampler of Maria Shaw, 1827. 

Arthur Seabury : Old Indian dish. 

Miss Helen L. Shepard: An autograph sermon by Rev. 
Mase Shepard. 

Abel B. Simmons: Violoncello and bow, formerly used in 
church. 



CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF LITTLE COMPTON. 119 

Loaned hy : 

Mrs. Robert Snow: Family record; holder and sinker; 
warming pan; 4 spoons "B. H."; Spanish bell; minia- 
ture; antique cotton print bed hanging; calash; slip- 
pers; 2 powderhorns; shaving case; mirror; picture, 
"Fisherman's Dog;" toaster from oven; brass kettle; 
Machero cigar lighter; Nancy Swift's spoons; Abigail 
Pope's spoons; blue woven bedspread; harness frame 
for making harness for loom. Pewter: 4 candlesticks; 
pitcher; 2 mugs; 3 candle-snufters; tray; platter; 3 
plates; 2 dishes; 2 porringers. 

Miss Elizabeth F. Sowle : Pewter lamp ; pewter platter. 

Mrs. Mary A. Sowle : Large wooden spoon ; pair of velvet 
slippers ; nurse lamp ; Britannia teapot. 

Mrs. Zoeth H. Soule : Book, "The Doctrine of Regenera- 
tion," 1738. 

Mrs. James B. Springer: Small pewter porringer; sampler 
worked by Rhoda M. (Mrs. Forbes W.) Manchester, 
1841; embroidered collar which belonged to loaner's 
grandmother, Lydia Shaw. 

Mrs. Walter Sylvia: Squire Little's lantern; brass and 
crystal lamp; brooch owned by great-grandmother; 
brown pitcher. 

Mrs. Sarah J. Taylor: Sampler worked by the loaner at 
age of five years. 

Mrs. Francis O. Teipp : Tin tallow lamp, 

Mrs. Lydia J. Warner Wooden candlestick ; pewter tea- 
pot, plate and mug; sampler, Phebe Ann Harris, 1832; 
2 placques. 

Mrs. Isaac C. Wilbour : Bedspread made of three wedding 
gowns; knife and fork 100 years old. 

Miss Ardblia M. W^ilbor: 4 tables, one of which belonged 
to Simon Peckham. 

Mrs. Charles R. Wilbur: Chairs; pewter basin; 2 pewter 
plates; glass lamp 300 years old, belonged to John 
Sawyer; blue and white pitcher and bowl; blue and 
white bedspread. 



120 BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 

Loaned by: 

Mrs. Daniel Wilbour: Pair brass andirons: 

Miss Florence Wilbour: 2 snuffboxes; velvet bag of 
Elizabeth Briggs, 100 years old; dimity knee-breeches 
and figured linen vest of Capt. Samuel Briggs; pink 
slippers, 100 years old; pack of playing cards; dance 
invitation to Miss Briggs printed on back of 8 of hearts 
playing card; Mrs. Alexander Wilbour's pink silk 
gown; Judith Wilbour's sampler, 1810. 

Mrs. Oliver H. Wilbor : 2 shell combs 100 years old ; em- 
broidered letter case 150 years old; will of Jonathan 
Wilbur, 1799; deed of Anthony Wilbour, 1797; blue 
velvet beaded purse; sampler; Clark's Magazine, 1795; 
Gospel Labours of Churchman, 1779; nose glasses in 
wooden case ; silver spoon, ''L. W, ;" Staffordshire pickle 
leaves; cup; basket; cider mug; pink table-scarf; 2 
china sauce dishes. 

Mrs. B. F. Wilbur: Baby chair; calash; foot stove; saddle 
and bag; law book; 3 candelabra; 46 p^'isms; 2 chairs; 
2 inlaid snuffboxes; mission chair; candle mould; 
spindle chair; portrait of W. Bates; skillet; kettle, 3 
legs; sampler made by Friscilla Alden; bonnet made by 
Hannah Milk of Boston, 1830; portrait, Dr. Lloyd 
Brayton, about 1820. 

Mrs. Philip H. Wilbour: 2 Indian relics of stone; 9 
documents; Josiah Shaw's orations, 1798; almanack, 
1796; Military Companion, 1810; Gov. Dorrs "Broad- 
side;" letter to Hon. Isaac Wilbur, 1807; bill of arrest 
for Charles Wood, 1825; General Assembly document, 
1807. Do. 1806; value received, Nathan Searle, 1707; 
skillet; map of original allotments of Little Compton 
land, made by Otis Wilbor. 

Mrs. William B. Wilber: Patchwork quilt of which the 
red. portions were made from coat worn in War of 1812 
by Walter Wilbour. 
Mrs. Clarence C. Wordell: 3 tables; book, 1707. 













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